CHAPTER NEWS
Chapters Help Recruit ASA Members
I
n May, we challenged our chapters to We also would like to thank the follow-
help the association grow by recruiting ing chapters, which referred at least one
new members. Chapters are the grass- member who subsequently joined the asso-
roots of the American Statistical Association, ciation: Albuquerque, Ann Arbor, Arizona,
and every time a chapter recruits a new Austin, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland,
member, the ASA grows stronger, resulting Colorado-Wyoming, Connecticut,
in expanded resources; greater recognition, Dayton, Detroit, Florida, Houston,
influence, and support of the statistical pro- Kansas-West Missouri, Maryland,
fession; more career opportunities; and the North Carolina, North Texas,
overall advancement of statistics. New York City Metro, Oklahoma,
Chapters were divided into four groups Oregon, Pittsburgh, Puget Sound,
based on their total membership. The chap- San Diego, San Francisco Bay
ter from each group with the most recruits Area, South Carolina, Southeast
received complimentary ASA membership Texas, Southern Ontario-Toronto,
renewals for their officers. Winners also Southwest Michigan, Twin Cities,
received two free ASA memberships to Virginia Academy of Sciences, and
award to chapter members of their choos- Washington Statistical Society.
ing. We would like to thank all participants Our Chapter-Get-a-Member
in this campaign, with special thanks going Challenge came to an end on
to the winners from each chapter group. October 31, 2007. During the
The winning chapters are: campaign, 117 new members
Category 1: Southern California Chapter
referred directly by a chapter
joined the ASA. Thank you to
Category 2: Louisiana Chapter
those chapters that participated.
Category 3: Delaware Chapter
Look for another Chapter-Get-a-
Member campaign soon. n
Category 4: Harrisburg Chapter
Southern California
The Southern California Chapter held their annual “fall kick- statistics (and few in literature), while math, music, and chess
off” event October 27 at Claremont McKenna College. The have had many. He said it is because math, music, and chess
event’s format is for an invited lecturer to give a morning talk operate under fixed rules, while statistics relies on life’s experi-
about statistics in practice and an afternoon talk about statistics ences to make logical assumptions and deductions about how
in education. In between, there are graduate and undergraduate data are collected, what parameters are used, and how those
presentations. This year, the invited lecturer was Dick De Veaux parameters are interpreted. De Veaux also discussed how this
from Williams College. creates difficulties in teaching statistics. This is especially true
De Veaux’s morning presentation was titled “Data Mining in the when facing the challenges of teaching (or learning) introduc-
Real World: Five Lessons Learned in the Pit.” The talk was about tory statistics courses in just one semester.
what it is like to be a data mining practitioner and some of the After De Veaux’s morning talk, presentations were given by
common problems encountered. He discussed how data prepara- a few University of California, Riverside, graduate students.
tion is most of the work and the importance of understanding how They discussed their experiences and applications of statistical
to interpret enormous data sets, comprehend the many variables, methods while interning at Integrien Corporation in Irvine,
and configure the data into a usable format. Examples were given California. Veronica Montes de Oca discussed nonparametric
of how not knowing enough about the variables in the data led to cusum algorithm with applications to network surveillance and
conclusions that were either obvious or did not make sense. Other Payal Shah talked about sequential root cause analysis.
‘lessons’ were knowing when to stop (when the data is not revealing The day ended with presentations from California State
anything) and knowing when there is something to pursue. Long Beach undergraduate students. Ha Dang spoke about
The afternoon talk was titled “Math Is Music, but Stats Is the six weeks she spent at North Carolina State University at
Literature—Or When Did Teaching Stats Get So Hard?” De the Summer Institute for Training in Biostatistics, and Jason
Veaux asked why there have not been any child prodigies in Prull talked about his internship at DirectTV.
JANUARY 2008 AMSTAT NEWS 41
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