WSS NEWS

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

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November 1999

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Contents:

• Methodology Section on the WSS Web Site
• National GIS Day
• Multi-Site WSS Seminars
• SIGSTAT for November & December, 1999
• International Conference on Establishment Surveys - II
  Survey Methods for Businesses, Farms, and Institutions
  Call for Abstracts for Contributed Papers
• Probability and Statistics Day, 1999
  Saturday, November 13, 1999
• Employment Opportunities
• Courses
• Seminars
• Area Meetings and Courses (Adobe Acrobat PDF file)
• Note From The WSS NEWS Editor
• WSS People

Methodology Section on the WSS Web Site

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National GIS Day

Attend one or both. Further details are inside upcoming seminars

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Multi-Site WSS Seminars

WSS members in the DC-area are invited to participate at the video conference at either the JPSM at the University of Maryland campus or at BLS. The U of MD location is: 1218 Lefrak Hall. A map to the location is found on www.jpsm.umd.edu.

The BLS location is: BLS Conference Center, rooms 2 & 3, Postal Square Building, 2 Massachusetts Avenue, NE, Washington, DC, 20212 (Metro Red Line-Union Station). Use the First St. NE entrance. To attend please leave a message at 202-606-7524 or send email to Stuart Scott (scott_s@bls.gov) at least 2 days before talk to be placed on the visitor list, and bring photo ID.

The first three-way video conference will be on Thursday, December 2 from 12:10 to 1:30. The speaker will be Trivellore Raghunathan and his talk is entitled "Estimation from Linked Surveys." The abstract follows.

Abstract: The objective of this talk is to present methods that improve efficiency of estimates of the population quantities by using auxiliary data from linked surveys. Estimation in two types of linked surveys will be discussed. The first type of link, a "tight link," occurs when the sample pool from a large survey is used as a frame for another survey. An example of such a link is the National Survey of Family Growth that used the National Health Interview Survey sample pool as the frame. The second type of link, a "loose link" occurs when multiple surveys use the same PSU's or share geographical regions, a common feature in many national surveys. A Bayesian framework is used to develop the estimates. The design-based properties of these estimates will be investigated in terms of bias, the mean square error and the confidence interval coverage. The efficiency of estimates with and without using information from linked surveys will be compared.

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SIGSTAT for November & December, 1999

The November 10 topic is SAS/INSIGHT.

SAS/INSIGHT software, a component of the SAS System, is a dynamic tool for exploring and analyzing your data. With it you can examine univariate distributions, visualize multivariate data, and fit models using regression, analysis of variance, and the generalized linear model. With SAS/INSIGHT software, all graphs and analyses are dynamic.

On December 8 the topic is PC/TSP.

TSP is a language for the estimation and simulation of econometric models. Although TSP was originally and continues to be developed primarily by economists, there is nothing in its design limiting it to economic times series. Any data consisting of repeated observations of the same variable for different units may be analyzed with TSP.

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International Conference on Establishment Surveys - II
Survey Methods for Businesses, Farms, and Institutions
Call for Abstracts for Contributed Papers

The Conference: A second International Conference on Establishment Surveys (ICES-II) will be held June 17 - 21, 2000 in Buffalo, New York at the Adam's Mark Hotel. Since the first ICES was held in 1993, many new techniques have been implemented by practitioners around the globe. With the new millennium upon us, it is time for a forward look at methods for surveying businesses, farms, and institutions. ICES-II will contain invited and contributed paper sessions, short courses, and software demonstrations. The preliminary program can now be seen on our website. A hardcover, unedited volume of the invited papers--as well as CD-ROMs of the invited and contributed papers--will be produced after the conference.

Contributed Paper Sessions: At this time, we are soliciting abstracts for contributed papers. The focus of all papers must be on surveys of businesses, farms, or institutions--or issues related to their products. Special contributed paper sessions are also encouraged. These sessions are arranged in advance by an organizer, and include four speakers and a discussant. Potential topics include (among others) the following:

• Registers and frames --- classification, issues with multiple frames, updating for births and deaths

• Survey Design, Sampling, or Estimation --- survey coordination, small-area methods, outliers, pps sampling

• Data Collection or Processing --- electronic reporting, use of administrative records, respondent burden

• Dissemination --- web publishing, metadata, disclosure avoidance, public-use files, data warehousing

• Analysis of Economic Data --- effects of survey errors on indicators, seasonal adjustment, benchmarking

• Specific Sectors or Industries --- surveys of retail businesses, schools, farms, plants, hospitals, and jails

• Cross-Cutting Issues --- meta analysis, international comparisons, measurement errors and evaluation

How to Submit Abstracts and Register: An abstract of 200 words should be submitted, accompanied by a completed registration form and registration fee of $350 U.S. Registration forms and more detailed information can be obtained on our website at www.eia.doe.gov/ices2/index.html. There you can also find the call for software demonstrations. General questions about the conference can be addressed to John G. Kovar at kovar@statcan.ca, or by calling (613) 951-8615. Questions about the contributed paper sessions should be addressed to Pat Cantwell at patrick.j.cantwell@ccmail.census.gov or by calling (301) 457-8105.

Call for Software Demonstration

The Demonstrations: Since the first ICES was held in 1993, many new processing systems have been developed by statistical agencies or software organisations around the globe. The organising committee will set aside a room for demonstrating software used in establishment surveys. Demonstrations should target live processing of data with possible customisations for the interest of specific audiences, rather than inflexible slide shows or presentations. Proposed software packages should already be in use for one or more establishment surveys and should be designed to automate establishment survey processes, such as Sample design and selection; Data collection, capture and coding: Record linkage and matching: Editing and imputation; Weighting, estimation, and tabulation; Times series adjustment; Disclosure analysis; Survey data analysis; and Publication and data presentation.

Schedule and Equipment: The demonstrations will take place during the regular conference sessions, on June 19-20. They will be split in four different groups, with a dedicated half day for each group. The organizing committee will provide the participants with telephone lines, tables and chairs. The participants will bring their laptops or desktop computers with their own software already set up.

How to send your proposal: A 200 word abstract must be submitted by December 1, 1999. A completed registration form and registration fee of $350 U.S. will be required later. The abstract will help evaluate the proposed software demonstration. It should include a description of the software package, potential applications in other survey organisations, and special equipment required for the demonstration. Registration forms, as well as detailed information can be obtained on our web site. Nominations and questions on the software demonstrations should be sent to Claude Poirier at poircla@statcan.ca or by calling (613) 951-1491.

Visit our web site at www.eia.doe.gov/ices2/index.html

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Note From The WSS NEWS Editor

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Probability and Statistics Day, 1999
Saturday, November 13, 1999

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

In addition, there will be contributed sessions as well as invited sessions from FDA and NIST. Since there are limited dining facilities at UMBC on Saturdays, the registration fee will also include lunch. The fee is $25 ($10 for students). Please send checks payable to "MD Chapter, ASA" by November 8 to: Nagaraj Neerchal, UMBC Dept. of Math & Stat, MP 437, 1000 Hilltop Circle Baltimore, MD 21250

Online registration, abstract submission and other information is at http://d73-073.mathsci.usna.edu/PS99/

Please register online and then send your check to Nagaraj. Walkup registrations can be accepted on the day of the conference, but lunch will be provided only to those who register in advance.

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WSS People

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First posted October 28, 1999
Last modified November 12, 1999

Webmaster: Dan Jacobs, Maryland Sea Grant