WSS NEWS

News about activities of the Washington Statistical Society
A Chapter of the American Statistical Association

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May 2000

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Contents:

• Annual Election for Board of Directors
• 2000 Annual Dinner
• Conference: Improving the Quality of Medical Care Statistics
• GMU Fall Graduate Courses In Statistics
• Biographical Information Of Candidates For
  The 2000 - 2001 WSS Board Of Directors
• Using Federal Statistics in the Work Place
• SIGSTAT for May
• Employment Opportunities
• Courses
• Seminars
• Area Meetings and Courses (Adobe Acrobat PDF file)
• Note From The WSS NEWS Editor
• WSS People

Annual Election for Board of Directors

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Conference: Improving the Quality of Medical Care Statistics

The session will begin with a discussion of recent developments in national statistics, followed by a seminar and discussion on the research and methodology for improving the quality of medical care statistics. The seminar will include a presentation by Dr. David Cutler, Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Dr. Cutler will address the question of how the price of health care can be measured more accurately, and then focus on how to quantify changes in the effectiveness and value of treatment, which has broad application outside of economic measurement. Dr. Cutler will describe and assess the current research developments--both inside and outside the statistical agencies--and strategies and priorities for future research. The presentation will outline ideas for implementing consistent frameworks for economic and health statistics and in turn, national health accounts. Discussion will follow the presentation.

There is no cost for this seminar but pre-registration is required. Please send an email to: cnstat@nas.edu if you would like to attend. Or, if you prefer, you may call the Committee's office, 202-334-3097.

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GMU Fall Graduate Courses In Statistics

STAT 530: Mathematical Methods for Statistics and Engineering
M 7:20p.m. - 10:00p.m., (Gantz)

STAT 544: Applied Probability
R 4:30p.m. - 7:10p.m., (Davis)

STAT 554: Applied Statistics
W 7:20p.m. - 10:00p.m., (Sutton)

STAT 574: Survey Sampling I
T 7:20p.m. - 10:00p.m., (Bolstein)

STAT 658: Time Series Analysis and Forecasting
M 4:30p.m. - 7:10p.m., (Bell)

STAT 662: Multivariate Statistical Methods
W 7:20p.m. - 10:00p.m., (Miller)

STAT 663: Statistical Graphics and Data Exploration
T 4:30p.m. - 7:10p.m., (Carr)
STAT 679: Topics in Survey Design and Analysis R 7:20p.m. - 10:00p.m., (Staff)

STAT 682: Computational Methods in Engineering and Statistics
W 4:30p.m. - 7:10p.m., (Nash)

STAT 751: Computational Statistics
W 4:30p.m. - 7:10p.m., (Gentle)

CSI 771: Computational Statistics
W 4:30p.m. - 7:10p.m., (Gentle)

INFT 746: Stochastic Calculus
R 7:20p.m. - 10:00p.m., (Habib)

INFT 776: Real Analysis and Statistics
M 7:20p.m. - 10:00p.m., (Habib)

INFT 877: Geometric Methods in Statistics
T 7:20p.m. - 10:00p.m., (Wegman)

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Biographical Information Of Candidates For
The 2000 - 2001 WSS Board Of Directors

President

Treasurer

Representative-At-Large

Jeri Mulrow is a statistician at Ernst and Young. Prior to that, she worked at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago as a survey statistician and as a Mathematical Statistician at the Statistics of Income (SOI) Division of the Internal Revenue Service. Jeri has been active in the professional statistical community in several capacities. She is currently Chair of the Individual Membership Subcommittee of the American Statistical Association and does the social arrangements for the Washington Statistical Society. Jeri was a past Membership Chair of the Caucus for Women in Statistics. Jeri has also served as a Washington Statistical Society Short Course co-chair. Jeri holds a Master,s in statistics from Colorado State University and has taught statistics classes at Southern Illinois University. Her research interests include survey sampling, survey methodology, and statistical thinking and quality initiatives.

Elizabeth Nichols is a statistician at the U.S. Bureau of the Census where she works in the Center for Survey Methods Research (CSMR). Her primary research interests lie in survey methodology issues surrounding the use of electronic surveys for self-administered surveys. Prior to her position in CSMR, she worked in the demographic, economic and decennial areas of the Census Bureau. She completed her BS in Mathematics at Loyola College, Baltimore and her MS is Statistics at the George Washington University. From 1995-1999 she served as the WSS Secretary.

Stuart Scott is a mathematical statistician in the Office of Survey Methods Research, Bureau of Labor Statistics, where he has worked since 1976. Activities for WSS include Methodology section co-chair (1998-2000) and Science Fair judge most years 1993-2000. This past year, he has helped initiate video conference seminars for WSS with the Joint Program in Survey Methodology, NCHS, Census, and Westat. He has made numerous presentations at ASA for both the Survey Research Methods and Business & Economic Statistics Sections. Stuart is a member of the organizing committee and a session organizer for the 2nd International Conference on Establishment Surveys this June. Current interests include seasonal adjustment, time series modeling, and data editing/screening. He served as an associate editor for Journal of Official Statistics 1989-95. He has a BA in mathematics from Rice University and a PhD in mathematics (statistics) from Catholic University. He has taught at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario.

Methodology Section Chair

Alan H. Dorfman lead seminars at St. John's College, until, later than most, inspired by chi-square and fruitflies, he made statistics his career choice. He did his graduate work by chance at Johns Hopkins University, guided by the theories of Richard Royall, the practical savvy of Allyn Kimball, the dedication of David Duncan, and the maxims of Alan Ross. During this period he spent a summer gaining experience working on the National Health Care Expenditure Survey, under the valued aegis of Steve Cohen, who (again by chance) happens to be his worthy rival for this important position. Afterwards, he did some teaching and research, up North and down South, until self realization set in, and he came to government service at BLS, where he has consulted and done research for close on ten years (and served as BLS Statistical Seminar Chairman for most of that time). The principal consequence of this history is that he fully expects to be well into his nineties before being able to achieve a sufficiently remunerative retirement. He likes to work in partnership, especially with organized workaholics. In this regard, Rick Valliant, R. Royall, and he have recently completed a book on the Prediction Approach to Survey Sampling, which will doubtless prove to be a great boon for understanding the great bulk of sampling seminars, once it appears. In his leisure moments, he is ruled by a wife, and two on-their-way-to-adulthood kids.

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Using Federal Statistics in the Work Place

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SIGSTAT for May, 2000

The May SIGSTAT meeting will be on the 10th with a discussion about nQuery Advisor which is used by researchers in study planning and Equivtest which is used in analysis of bioequivalence and bioavailability studies.

Directions to the building can be found at the SIGSTAT website, www.econ.ag.gov/sigstat/.

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Note From The WSS NEWS Editor

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WSS People

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First posted April 28, 2000
Last modified June 2, 2000

Webmaster: Dan Jacobs, Maryland Sea Grant