Statistics and the Environment
Activities Include Upcoming Workshop
Devin Johnson, Publications Chair
T
he Statistical Issues in Monitoring will be offered and taught by Doug Nychka. David Marker, chair of the Scientific and
the Environment Workshop is There also will be a poster session. Poster Public Affairs Advisory Committee, and
scheduled for October 22–24, 2008, abstracts must be submitted by September Mary Christman, then chair of the ASA
at the National Center for Atmospheric 23, 2008. For more information, visit Section on Statistics and the Environment.
Research in Boulder, Colorado. This work-
www.stat.purdue.edu/envr or contact Hao The program was facilitated by Richard
shop covers state-of-the-art applications Zhang, Department of Statistics, Purdue Smith and Doug Nychka.
and statistical methods in environmental University, West Lafayette, IN 47906; The impetus for this workshop came
monitoring. Sessions on applications
zhanghao@purdue.edu. from the need for the American Statistical
include monitoring in ecology and air qual- Association—which has not been involved
ity and monitoring of aquatic resources and
Climate Change Workshop
in the past at an institutional level—to
climate change and its impacts. The spatio-
Update
develop a public position on the subject
temporal data collected in environmental Mary Christman and David Marker of climate change, as has been done on a
monitoring present interesting and chal- number of other public policy issues involv-
lenging statistical problems such as model- In October 2007, the section and ASA ing statistics. The objective of the work-
ing of space-time correlation, analysis of the Scientific and Public Affairs Advisory shop was to ensure the ASA received input
huge amount of correlated data, and analy- Committee cosponsored a two-day work- from researchers involved in climate change
sis of high-frequency monitoring data. shop bringing together 15–20 leading research in order to develop a position.
Technical sessions will cover recent develop- statisticians and atmospheric scientists. The major result of the workshop was
ments in statistical methods for environ- The event was hosted by the National a white paper on the role of statistics in
mental data. A one-day short course on the Center for Atmospheric Research in climate change, including future areas of
analysis of spatial and spatiotemporal data Boulder, Colorado, and facilitated by research. The position stated in the white
paper was adopted by the ASA Board of
Directors and released in December 2007.
Statistical Computing and Graphics In the announcement, the ASA endorses the
findings in the recently published Fourth
Student Paper Competition Winners
Assessment Report of the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Announced
Change. They further identify several
areas ripe for statistical research and input
J. R. Lockwood, Awards Chair, Statistical Computing and Statistical Graphics Sections
into the controversy surrounding human
impact on climate change. For more infor-
Ming-Hung Kao (advisor John
mation about the importance of the role
A
s in previous years, the
statistical computing Stufken) “Multi-Objective Optimal
of statisticians in climate change research
and graphics sections Experimental Designs for Event-
as described in the position paper, see
sponsored their annual stu- Related fMRI Studies”
www.amstat.org/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=
dent paper competition.
climatechange.
Ernest Kwan (advisor Michael
The requirements were
Friendly) “Tableplot: A New Display
that the student be the
Climate Change in Denver
for Factor Analysis”
first author of a paper
In addition to the workshop held last year,
in statistical comput- Adam Rothman (advisor Liza Levina)
the section will sponsor several activities
ing, which might be “Sparse Permutation Invariant
at this year’s Joint Statistical Meetings in
original methodological research, a Covariance Estimation”
Denver related to increasing awareness of sta-
novel application, or a software-related
tistical activities in climate change research.
Michael Wu (advisor Xihong Lin)
project. The four winners were invited to
Two invited sessions are scheduled: The Role
“Two-Group Classification Using
present their papers at a special contribut-
of Statisticians in Understanding Climate
Sparse Linear Discriminant Analysis”
ed session during the 2008 Joint Statistical
Change and Statistical Aspects of Regional
Meetings at the expense of the sections. The students will be recognized at the
Climate Modeling. The section also will
A number of excellent entries were statistical computing/statistical graphics
sponsor roundtables for more intimate dis-
received, from which the selection commit- business meeting during JSM in Denver.
cussions about statistical input to the climate
tee—consisting of the Council of Sections Congratulations to the winners, and many
change controversy. Be sure to check out the
representatives of the sections—selected thanks to the judges for their hard work in
program for JSM 2008 and plan to attend
four winners (in alphabetical order): making this year’s competition a success.
one or more of these activities. n
48 AMSTAT NEWS MARCH 2008
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