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May 2002

Contents:


Annual Election for Board of Directors

An election ballot for the 2002-2003 program year of the Washington Statistical Society Board of Directors is enclosed in the surface mail version of this issue. Biographical information on the candidates is also provided in this issue. Ballots must be received by Friday, May 31, 2002 to be counted. Results will be announced at the WSS Annual Dinner.

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Biographical Information Of Candidates
For The 2002 - 2003 WSS Board Of Directors

President - Elect | Treasurer
Methodology Chair | Representatives at Large

President - Elect

David Marker is an Associate Director and Senior Statistician with Westat. In this position he coordinates statistical activities on numerous tasks for many different government agencies. Recent projects have included helping to prepare a State of the Environment report for EPA; designing a national survey of occupational health and safety hazards for NIOSH; co-Principal Investigator for national surveys of human exposure to lead and allergens in homes and child care centers; review of the QA of the 2000 Census; and evaluations of the ability of national surveys to produce state-level and demographic subgroup estimates for HHS. Over the last eight years, David has served as a senior consultant to several European statistical agencies on continuous quality improvement (CQI). He also presented a two-day JPSM short course (with Lars Lyberg) on CQI. David has twice been elected to the WSS Board of Directors, as Methodology Chair (1988-90) and At-Large Member (1997-99). As an At-Large Member he took the lead in developing WSS­ policy on defending statistics in the public arena (responding to statistical topics in the press), which was used as the basis for current ASA policy. He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. David will be a keynote speaker at this summer's International Conference on Improving Surveys in Copenhagen Denmark. He was a co-organizer and speaker at the five WSS Quality Assurance in Government Symposia. David is on the ASA Committee for Nominations for 2002 and 2003 and is on the Executive Board of the ASA Section on Statistics and the Environment. He has conducted training sessions on CQI for the International Association of Survey Statisticians (IASS) in England, Turkey and Latvia, and been an invited speaker on small area estimation in Poland, Finland, Latvia, San Francisco, and in Potomac MD. David also participated in two workshops on small area estimation sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Official Statistics (JOS) and has had articles published in JOS, Environmetrics, Statistical Science; and Survey Methodology, and chapters in the books Environmental Statistics, Assessment, and Forecasting; Survey Methodology and Process Quality; and Survey Nonresponse. He has Ph.D. and masters degrees in biostatistics and statistics, respectively, from the University of Michigan and bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Maryland.

Stuart Scott is a Mathematical Statistician in the Office of Survey Methods Research, Bureau of Labor Statistics. For WSS, he is currently serving as a representative-at-large and previously, while Methodology Section chair, introduced video conferences to the seminar program. He has been a WSS Science Fair judge since 1993. He is currently Program Chair for ASA­s Business & Economic Statistics Section. He was an organizer for the 2000 International Conference on Establishment Surveys. He was an Associate Editor of Journal of Official Statistics, 1989-95. He has a Ph.D. in mathematics (statistics) from the Catholic University of America, a Masters in statistics from the University of Chicago, and a Bachelors in mathematics from Rice University. He taught at the University of Western Ontario, 1972-76. Since coming to BLS in 1976, his research interests have included seasonal adjustment and time series, outliers, and measurement errors in surveys. He has recently made presentations on seasonal adjustment to the NBER/NSF Time Series Workshop, Statistics Canada, and the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee.

Treasurer

Erin Whitworth is a Mathematical Statistician in the Decennial Statistical Studies Division of the U.S. Census Bureau. She is the Program Manager for two Census 2000 evaluations. The first, Internet Data Collection, examines the characteristics of households and persons responding to the Census short form over the Internet. The second, Evaluation of the Response Process of Selected Language Groups, called for a sample follow-up survey of Census respondents speaking Spanish, Vietnamese, and Russian to determine how these language groups dealt with the Census response process. Erin has presented her findings on these studies at various conferences, including ASA, AAPOR, and FCSM, and to the Census Advisory Committee. These two evaluations fit in nicely with her interests. A fluent speaker of Portuguese, she enjoys learning languages and studying other cultures. Having interned at Micron Technology and DuPont, she also has interests in industrial statistics, quality improvement, and technological advances. She enjoys public speaking and is a member of Toastmasters. She holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Statistics from Brigham Young University, and has worked at the Census Bureau for over three and a half years.

Methodology Chair

Dale Atkinson is a mathematical statistician for the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) in USDA. He received his undergraduate degree in mathematics from West Liberty State College in 1974 and his masters degree in statistics from Virginia Tech in 1976. Since then, Dale has worked in a number of units throughout the various divisions of NASS in both operational and research positions. He is currently Chief of the Census and Survey Research Branch in its Research and Development Division. Dale is a long time member of both ASA and WSS. He served on the FCSM Subcommittee on Measuring and Reporting the Quality of Survey Data, which in July 2001 issued its report on Measuring and Reporting Sources of Error in Surveys, as Statistical Policy Working Paper 31. Dale was also a member of the planning committees for the 1999 and 2001 FCSM Research Conferences. He is currently on the planning committee for the 2003 FCSM Research Conference.

Pat Cantwell is a supervisory mathematical statistician at the Bureau of the Census. His current position is leader of the Sampling Research Group in the Statistical Research Division. At the Bureau, he has worked primarily on sampling and estimation issues. He has spent over five years working on the household surveys, particularly the Current Population Survey; another five years in the economic area on surveys of retail and wholesale trade, transportation, trucking, and others; and four years on the decennial census of population and housing, and its post-enumeration survey. Prior to joining the Census Bureau, he received a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Connecticut. His areas of interest include rotation sampling designs, composite estimation, coordinated sampling, and measuring transportation flows. He serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Official Statistics, was a member of the organizing committee of the Second International Conference on Establishment Surveys, held in 2000, and is currently the program chair for the Section on Survey Research Methods of the ASA.

Representatives at Large

Dan Beckler is the head of the Data Quality Research Section in the USDA's National Agricultural Statistical Service's (NASS) Research and Development Division. He has worked at NASS for over ten years and have held several positions across the various functional areas of the agency. His education includes a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and a Master of Science in Survey Methodology (statistical science emphasis) from the Joint Program in Survey Methodology. He has been a member of the American Statistical Association for approximately five years and a member of the Washington Statistical Society for about two years. He is currently the co-chair of WSS' program on Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Daniel Cork is study director for the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) of the National Research Council (NRC). He is co-study director of the Panel on Research on Future Census Methods (2010 Census) and study director for the Workshop on Survey Automation, and provides research support and data analysis for the Panel to Review the 2000 Census. He received a joint Ph.D. in Statistics and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University in 2000, under a joint program brokered by the Department of Statistics and the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management; his dissertation work studies the abrupt increase in juvenile homicide in the mid-1980s through the use of diffusion models and change-point analysis. He completed his bachelor's degree in statistics at George Washington University. His research interests include applications of statistics in criminology and in sports, particularly boxing. With CNSTAT colleague Michael Cohen, he is co-editor of the "Window on Washington" column in CHANCE Magazine.

Jennifer Guarino has a B.S. in Mathematical Sciences with a concentration in Statistics from Loyola College and a M.S. in Survey Methodology from the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM) at the University of Maryland. She started working at the Census Bureau as a Mathematical Statistician in August of 1995. She began her career analyzing and experimenting with error properties of sample design features (stratification, clustering) for the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). After four years working on SIPP, Ms. Guarino was promoted to a supervisor in the Planning, Research, and Evaluation Division (PRED), where she primarily works on the design and implementation of statistical analyses to evaluate census and survey methods. Her main research interests lie in survey methods for reducing nonsampling error.

Jill Montaquila is a senior statistician at Westat and an assistant research professor in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM). Jill holds a Ph.D. in statistics from American University. Her statistical interests include various aspects of complex sample survey methodology, with emphasis on variance estimation for imputed data, methodology for random digit dialing surveys, and issues pertaining to oversampling of rare subpopulations. She has served WSS as co-chair and chair of the Social Arrangements Committee (1994 - 1998), as co-chair for Fairfax County on the Quantitative Literacy Committee (1994 - 1999), and as Treasurer (1998 - 2002). She has also served the Caucus for Women in Statistics as Representative-at-Large and Newsletter Features Editor.

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Education Announcements

ASA/SRS-NSF Research Fellowship Program

The American Statistical Association (ASA) and the Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS) of the National Science Foundation are proud to announce the ASA/SRS-NSF Research Fellowship Program. The Program will entail having an outstanding academic researcher/fellow conduct interdisciplinary research using SRS data on-site at the National Science Foundation for a three month period plus support for 10 percent of the researchers time at their home institution.

Possible topic areas include but are not limited to:

  • Analysis of science and engineering resources issues
  • Research related to the redesign of research and development surveys to increase the consistency and integration across separate surveys
  • Methodologies to improve the timeliness of data collections from institutional and individual respondent
  • Estimation techniques for state level estimates
  • Graphical displays and analysis of data
  • Web based survey development

Compensation is commensurate with the researcher's qualifications and experience. Fringe Benefits and travel allowances are negotiable. SRS will provide administrative support, office space, computer equipment, and access to SRS data and staff.

The researcher/fellow will be selected through a rigorous, competitive application process.

Deadline for summer program is May 15, 2002. Deadline for fall program is August 31, 2002.

For more information, including how to apply, please visit http://www.scs.gmu.edu/~wss/asa_nsf.html.

Visit the ASA Research Fellowships and Grants web page at http://www.amstat.org/research_grants/ for other fellowship opportunities.

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Education Announcements

New Wray Jackson Smith Scholarship

Supporting Work Towards a Career in Government Statistics

Deadline Extended Until May 15, 2002!!! Apply Now!!!

The Government Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association (ASA) is pleased to announce a new scholarship in memory of Wray Jackson Smith, a founding member of the Section and long-time contributor to Federal statistics. The Wray Jackson Smith Scholarship (WJSS), co-sponsored with the Social Statistics Section of ASA, the Washington Statistical Society, the Caucus for Women in Statistics, Mathematica Policy Research, and Synectics for Managements Decisions, Inc., is intended to reward promising young statisticians for their diligence, thereby encouraging them to consider a future in government statistics.

Accepting Applications Now

Type of Project -- The WJSS Award is designated for broad use in furthering the development of a career related to government statistics. Applicants are encouraged to be creative in seeking support for a wide variety of uses, including:

  • Tuition, board, and books for courses or short courses
  • Conference attendance
  • Purchase of books, software, data sets, or other supporting materials for research projects related to government statistics.

Activities may relate to any level of government, including Federal, state, and local governmental units. They must be statistical in nature, focusing on data, methodology, analysis, or data presentation.

Application -- To apply for a WJSS Award, the following information must be sent to the Wray Jackson Smith Scholarship Committee by May 15, 2002:

  • A completed WJSS Application Form (see http://www.amstat.org/sections/index.html, go to Section on Government Statistics, go to Wray Jackson Smith Scholarship)
  • A proposal of activity to be funded
  • Academic transcript (for current/recent students) or job performance reviews for the past 2 years (for nonstudents) or equivalent proof of superior academic and/or professional performance
  • Two letters of recommendation.

Please send material to:

Wray Jackson Smith Scholarship Committee
c/o Jana Lynn Asher
4115 Beehner Road
Pittsburgh, PA 15217

or electronically at: asher@stat.cmu.edu.

Selection Process -- The WJSS Committee, consisting of three Government Statistics Section members, will review each proposal, based on an established rating scheme, and select the awardees. Each application will be judged based on the following criteria:

  • Stage in Career
  • Past Performance
  • Quality of the Proposed Activity
  • Relevance of Activity to Government Statistics
  • Innovation/Ingenuity of the Proposed Project
  • Feasibility of Completion of Activity
  • Two Letters of Recommendation

Announcements of the awardees will be made by June 1, 2002. All applicants will be notified by mail.

Eligibility -- The WJSS is targeted at students and persons early in their career in government statistics. Applicants must have a Bachelor=s degree or equivalent level of education. Membership in the Government Statistics Section or in the ASA is not required.

For more information, contact Jana Asher by e-mail: A HREF="http://asher@stat.cmu.edu">asher@stat.cmu.edu.

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Education Announcements

Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Internship Program
The National Academies
Washington, D.C.

This Internship Program of the National Academies--consisting of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council--is designed to engage graduate and postdoctoral students in science and technology policy and to familiarize them with the interactions among science, technology, and government. As a result, students--in the fields of science, engineering, medicine, veterinary medicine, business, and law--develop essential skills different from those attained in academia, which will help them make the transition from being a graduate student to a professional.

We are pleased to announce a new fall 2002 program session expanding our program beyond its current summer and winter sessions. The fall 2002 program will take place from September 9 until November 27, 2002.

To apply, candidates should submit an application and request their mentor fill out a reference form. Both are available on the Web at http://national-academies.org/internship. The deadline for receipt of materials is June 1. Additional details about the program and how to join our mailing list are also available on the Web site.

Questions should be directed to: internship@nas.edu.

Here is what former interns said about the program:

"This is an important career building opportunity for people interested in the scientific community outside academia. Even if you plan to pursue a traditional academic track, seeing science from a policy perspective is very enlightening. There is something valuable in this experience for first year grad students to recent PhD's. Come with an open mind and expect to learn more than you bargained for."

"The National Academies Internship has been one of the most valuable life experiences I have had thus far. The scope of the influence of the Academies in helping shape science, medical and engineering related policy is amazing to witness. Through this internship, I have learned more about my work as a social scientist than I imagined, and I have a better sense of how my research can relate to public policy."

"The Internship program provides an exceptional opportunity for scientists to explore various facets of scholarly research and policymaking. As an intern, you will work with an eclectic mix of highly educated, diverse intellectuals who help advance the future of science. You will leave not only armed with important and influential contacts but also with invaluable skills and experiences." "This program will open your mind to a world rarely envisioned from the confines of laboratory bench work. I learned an immeasurable amount about the policy and politics behind science and after the internship opens your mind, it opens career doors."

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SIGSTAT Schedule: May, 2002 - June, 2002

May 8, 2002
 SAS INSIGHT
June 12, 2002
 PROC KDE in SAS/STAT


SIGSTAT is the Special Interest Group in Statistics for the CPCUG, the Capital PC User Group, and WINFORMS, the Washington Institute for Operations Research Service and Management Science.

All meetings are in Room 3056, 1800 M St, NW from 12:30 to 1:30. Enter the South Tower & take the elevator to the 3rd floor to check in at the guard's desk.

First-time attendees should contact Charlie Hallahan, 202-694-5051, hallahan@ers.usda.gov and leave their name. Directions to the building & many links of statistical interest can be found at the SIGSTAT website, www.cpcug.org/user/sigstat/

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Note From The WSS NEWS Editor

Items for publication in the Summer 2002 WSS NEWS should be submitted no later than June 20, 2002. E-mail items to Michael Feil at michael.feil@usda.gov. Any items received after this date will appear in the next issue of the WSS NEWS.

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First posted April 24, 2002
Last modified November 03, 2015

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