Upcoming and past SSO events

Statistical Society of Ottawa
3rd Annual Student Research Day
Date: Friday September 23, 2011 (8:30--16:00)
Place: University of Ottawa
Award: $500 in prizes for winners (based on presentation)
 
Each year the SSO sponsors an opportunity for students from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University to show off their statistical research to the SSO community. The event alternates between the two universities each year.
 
This year the event will be held at the University of Ottawa and is sponsored by the Statistical Society of Ottawa, the University of Ottawa Departments of Mathematics and Statistics, the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine and Carleton University School of Mathematics and Statistics. The event starts at 8:30 in Lamoureux building (145 Jean-Jacques Lussier) room 390 and moves to 585 King Edward room B05 at 13:00 for the afternoon workshop.
 
We invite students undertaking statistical research projects this summer to compete for prizes. Eligible projects extend beyond theoretical/methodological work in statistics to include projects from disciplines outside statistics that focus on the application of statistical methods. The format will be a 15-20 minute presentation. There will be $500 in prizes for winners. Depending on participation, awards will be arranged at the degree level. Following the judging there will be short presentations by Ottawa-area employers currently recruiting students in statistics.
 
Following lunch, a workshop on R statistical software will be offered. Students wishing to have their abstracts considered must submit an abstract to Pierre-Jérôme Bergeron (pbergero@uOttawa.ca) by August 30, 2011. Attendance at the prize competition in the morning is free. Attendance for lunch and the R workshop in the afternoon is free to students and members of the SSO.  Individuals will be able to join the SSO on-site at the Student Research Day. Annual dues are $12. 
 

 
Statistical Society of Ottawa
2011 Spring Workshop on
Causal Inference
On Friday May 27th, the Statistical Society of Ottawa will hold a workshop on Causal Inference. The one-day workshop will be presented by Professor Jay Kaufman, Canada Research Chair in Health Disparities Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health, McGill University. The workshop will take place in Fauteux, the Law building, at the University of Ottawa in FTX 227 between 08:30 and 17:30 on Friday May 27th.
 
Note that we have cancelled the symposium on Thursday May 26th.  Any registrations will be refunded.
 
Those wishing to attend are encouraged to pre-register before Tuesday May 23 by contacting the SSO by email sso.ottawa.canada@gmail.com. This will help us plan the lunch.
 
Cost to Attend
 
SSO members:
Workshop & lunch: $100
 
Non-members and membership renewal: add $12
 
Student rate:
Workshop & lunch: $30 (free SSO membership)
 
Causal Inference attempts to uncover the structure of the data and eliminate all non-causative  explanations for an observed association. The goal of most, if not all, statistical inference is to uncover causal relationships, but it is not in general possible to conclude causality from standard statistical inference procedures, merely that the observed  association between two variables is not due to  chance. The need for causal inference procedures is  apparent in many fields, for example in the field of health research, where  quantifying the efficacy of new therapies, or uncovering the etiology of diseases, is often  rendered complicated due to difficulties inherent in  observational studies. Even in experimental studies, partial compliance to treatment regimens can  compromise a well-designed experiment. The complexity of models, and corresponding inference procedures, is heightened in the context of longitudinal studies, where time-dependent  confounding may be present.
 
 
Statistical Society of Ottawa
8th annual seminar
Our Statistics Community Discusses the Long Form Census 
 
On Monday October 25th, the Statistical Society of Ottawa is organizing our annual Statistical Community Workshop at the University of Ottawa in the late afternoon on the topic of the long form census. We hope to provide our members with a forum for frank discussion. The day after Statistics Canada is organizing a symposium "Social Statistics: The Interplay among Censuses, Surveys and Administrative Data" (October 26-29, 2010).
 
Monday October 25th, 2010 
 
Registration starts at 13:00
 
13:30-15:45 CONTRIBUTED TALKS ON THE LONG FORM CENSUS
 (Desmarais DMS1160  multimedia classroom)
 
Presentations from academic, public and private sectors, both researchers and practitioner are welcomed.  The open format of the event, with short presentations and time for meeting presenters, will enhance the exchange opportunities between participants. This event provides an opportunity for SSO members to obtain feedback on their work from their peers. Those wishing to give a presentation are required to register by email at “sso.ottawa.canada@gmail.com". The name and organization of the presenter as well as the title of the presentation should be provided.
 
Contributed talks so far:
 
·         David Williams, University of Ottawa – The importance of small area data in population health research: a perinatal health case study
 
·         Wendy Watkins, Carleton University - The Long Form Census, Disaster Planning and Other Uses You Didn't Know You'd Be Missing
 
·         Bruce Libman, Champlain LHIN - Using Census data for Health Services Planning
 
·         Tracey Lauriault, Carleton University - The Census informs Neighbourhood Research in Canada
 
·         Peggy Taillon, Canadian Centre for Social Development - The Age of Ignorance: Canada's War on Information & Growing Social Deficit
 
 
16:00-17:30 PANEL DSICUSSION ON THE LONG FORM CENSUS
 (Desmarais DMS1160  multimedia classroom)
 
Panelists:  Monica Boyd, Ernie Boyko, Ivan Fellegi and Peggy Taillon
  
·         Why or how did this happened?
 
·         What do the panelists see as the impact that this will have?
 
·         What is the future of the Canadian Census? 
 
 
17:30-19:00 Wine and cheese
 (reception room top floor of the Desmarais building: DMS12110)
 
Cost to Attend: students $10 members $20 non-members $32 (includes a SSO membership for one year)
PLEASE CIRCULATE TO OTHERS WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED.
 
 
Those wishing to attend are encouraged to pre-register by contacting the SSO by email
“sso.ottawa.canada@gmail.com".
 
2nd Annual Student Research Day
Sponsored by the Statistical Society of Ottawa
Friday September 17, 2010 at Carleton University
 
 Each year the SSO sponsors an opportunity for students from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University to show off their statistical research to the SSO community. The event alternates between the two universities each year.
 
This year the event will be held at Carleton University sponsored by the Statistical Society of Ottawa, the University of Ottawa Departments of Mathematics and Statistics, the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine and Carleton University School of Mathematics and Statistics. The event starts at 8:30 in the MacPhail Room in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in the Herzberg Building at Carleton University.
 
We invite students undertaking statistical research projects this summer to compete for prizes. There are two formats: a 20 minute presentation or a poster. There will be $500 in prizes for winners in each format. Depending on participation, awards will be arranged at the degree level. Following the judging there will be short presentations by employers in Ottawa currently recruiting students in statistics. Then lunch will be served. In the afternoon there will be a workshop on R statistical software.
 
In order to be considered, students must submit an abstract to Jason Nielsen (jdn@math.carleton.ca) by August 30, 2010.
 
Attendance at the prize competition in the morning is free. Attendance for lunch and the R workshop in the afternoon is free to students and members of the SSO.  Individuals will be able to join the SSO on-site at the Student Research Day. Annual dues are $12.
Co-winners for the first prize:
Applying the Theory of Planned Behavior to Radiography Ordering within the Canadian C-Spine and CT-Head Rule Implementation Studies: A Hierarchical Modeling Approach by Richard Perez
Nonparametric Regression using a Cramer-von Mises Statistic by Akira Sumi
Third place prize:
On a Rapid Simulation of the Dirichlet Process by Luai Al Labadi  
 
 
    
SSO Spring 2010 Event:Workshop and Symposium on Data Mining
 
The SSO held its Spring Event on April 19 and 20 at the Banting Theatre at Tunney's Pasture.  This year's topic was data mining. Approximately 65 people attended the day long workshop that was given by Dr. Hugh Chipman of Acadia University.  On April 20, a series of talks on more applied uses of data mining were given by Herna Viktor, Saeed Samet, Hugh Chipman, and Rafal Kustra. Copies of these presentations are provided below.
 
 
·                                 Workshop on Data Mining.  Dr. Hugh Chipman, Canada Research Chair in Mathematical Modelling, Director of the Acadia Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computation. 
·                                 Privacy-Preserving Data Mining.  Saeed Samet, University of Ottawa
·                                 Sizing populations: Finding archetypes in an anthropometric object-relational database.  Herna Viktor, University of Ottawa
·                                 Mining Transactional Network Data. Hugh Chipman, Acadia University
·                                 Bayesian-based help in calculating millions of p-values.  Rafal Kustra, University of Toronto
 
·                                 Cancer, Arsenic, Mortality and Their Relationship. Virendra Bharti.
·                                 Workshop: Creating More Effective Graphs. Naomi Robbins.
First Annual Statistical Society of Ottawa SSO Student Research Day
 
The SSO held its first student research day at the University of Ottawa on Sept. 11 and it was a great success. It was sponsored by the Statistical Society of Ottawa, the University of Ottawa Department of Mathematics and Statistics and Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine and Carleton University School of Mathematics and Statistics. The SSO created this opportunity for students from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University to show off their statistical research to the SSO community. The event will alternate between the two universities each year. 
 
The following students gave twenty minute presentations:
 
·                                 Robert Davies, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Ottawa
·                                 Ahmed Almaskut, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Carleton University
·                                 Ahalya Sivathayalan, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Carleton University
·                                 Maryam Khan, Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, University Of Ottawa
·                                 Chris Gravel, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Carleton University 
 
All of the presentations were excellent and the SSO community was very enthusiastic. The first prize was split between Robert Davies and Ahmed Almaskut ($300 each) and each of the other students was awarded $100 for their presentations.: 
 
An R workshop was presented by Dr. Rafal Kulik in the afternoon. This introduction to R included presented the code and application for many statistical methods including simulation, bootstrap and random matrices. 
 
Many thanks to the Centre de recherches mathématiques for contributing $500 and to the University of Ottawa Department of Mathematics and Statistics for its substantial involvement in organizing the day. 
 
It is an event well worth repeating! 
 

SSO Second Seminar Networking Lunch
January 16, 2009, 11:30-1:30University of Ottawa Heart InstituteFoustanellas Auditorium (2nd level, follow signs)40 Ruskin St. (part of Ottawa Hospital Civic Campus)
 
The SSO has organized its second networking seminar luncheon on Friday, January 16, 2009 from 11:30 until 1:30 at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, Foustanellas Auditorium (2nd level, follow signs), 40 Ruskin St. (part of The Ottawa Hospital Civic Campus). There is lots of hospital parking nearby and bus access is also easy (if available).
 
Our speaker will be Dr. Stephen Walter, Professor, Department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics, McMaster University and the first recipient of the Statistical Society of Canada Award for Impact of Applied and Collaborative Work in May 2008. The title is “Do you want your doctor to be an expert?”
 
This seminar networking lunch has been organized to respond to the top two picks of “How the SSO can help you” discussion at our 2007 Fall Seminar luncheon – seminars and networking lunches. More details will be provided soon on the SSO website /ottawa/statistical-society-ottawa.
 
If you would like to attend, please RSVP to sso.ottawa.canada@gmail.com by Jan. 14. There is no cost.
 
Networking Lunch Poster
 

SSO Annual General Meeting
June 25, 2009, 11:30-1:30au Petit Bill’s Bistro, 1293 Wellington Street
Agenda
SSO Student Awards given at the CSEB/APHEO meeting May 25-27, 2009
Awards (alphabetically)
·                                 Erin Graves, University of Western Ontario. The effects of obesity, gestational diabetes, and diet on excess fetal growth. Poster presentation
·                                 John Snelgrove, University of Western Ontario. A latent class approach to the association between socioeconomic trajectories and work-limiting disability. Oral presentation.
·                                 Chad Tosevski, Brock University. The relationship between body mass index and breast cancer recurrence and breast cancer-specific survival. Oral presentation.
·                                 David McDonald, University of Ottawa. Academic Consulting.
·                                 Tim Ramsay, University of Ottawa. Challenges: how should we train biostatisticians?
·                                 James Ramsay, McGill (retired). A functional data analysis look at prairie weather.
·                                 David McDonald, University of Ottawa. On-line quality control using Voronoi depth.
·                                 Karelyn Davis, Statistics Canada, Chul Gyu Park and Sanjoy Sinha, Carleton University. Analysis of Clustered Data Under Inequality Constraints: An Application to the Youth Smoking Survey.
·                                 Andy Ni and Nick Barrowman, Children’s Hospital of East Ontario. Statistical consulting at CHEO.
·                                 Determining if a Time Series is Stationary. David Dickey, North Carolina State University.
·                                 Continuous Individualized Multiorgan Variability Analysis: real-time bedside time-series monitoring. Andrew Seely, Ottawa Health Research Institute.
·                                 Long Range Dependence in Time Series Analysis. Mohamedou Ould Haye, Carleton University.
·                                 Applied Time Series Methods at Statistics Canada. Benoit Quenneville, Statistics Canada.
·                                 Robust estimation in unit root time series with infinite variance errors and their resampling. Mahmoud Zarepour, University of Ottawa.
·                                 Workshhop: Back to the Basics of Time Series and Forecasting. David Dickey, North Carolina State University.
SSO First Seminar Networking Lunch. February 15, 2008
Presentation
·                                 Should scientists share their data, even if there’s nothing in it for themselves? George Wells, Professor and Past Chair, Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, University of Ottawa and Director, Cardiovascular Research Methods Centre, University of Ottawa Heart Institute.
·                                 Introduction. Kathryn Williams, President SSO
·                                 Is it ethical to stop a clinical trial early? Tim Ramsay, University of Ottawa
·                                 Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining Research at CSE and the Cryptologic Research Institute. Francois Théberge, University of Ottawa
·                                 Are Bayesian Methods Appropriate for Survey Analysis? David Binder, (Retired) Statistics Canada
·                                 Methods for Summarizing Projected Mortality Rate Changes. Kevin Brand, University of Ottawa
·                                 Lunch Discussion: “How can the SSO help you?”
·                                 Workshop: Basics of R Statistical Software. Duncan Murdock, University of Western Ontario.
·                                 The ITERation project. Joseph Potvin, Treasury Board of Canada, Secretariat.
·                                 A spatial-temporal model for the effects of short-term exposure to urban ambient air pollution and health. R. T. Burnett, Health Canada.
·                                 Climate change: A review of the science. Konrad Gajewski,University of Ottawa.
·                                 A comparison of classification models for identifying chronic diseases cases and non-cases in administrative claims data. Lisa Lix, University of Manitoba.
·                                 GLT (Good Life Time) – An approach to measuring wellbeing. Michael C. Wolfson, Statistics Canada.
·                                 Workshop: Applied Bayesian Methods. Michael Escobar, University of Toronto.
·                                 David Binder
·                                 D.R.Thomas and Y.J. Decady
·                                 Edward Hughes
·                                 John Nash
·                                 Caroline Pelletier
·                                 Martin Pantel
·                                 Sultan
·                                 Yiwen Chen
·                                 An ODE to Statistics: Data Analysis for System Dynamics. Giles Hooker, McGill University.
·                                 Statistical Analysis of Forest Fire Activity. David Martell, University of Toronto.
·                                 Clustering Categorical Data in Large Databases. Steven Wang, York University.
·                                 Convergent Data Sharpening Applied to Lightning. Douglas Woolford, University of Western Ontario.
·                                 Rare Target Detection with LAGO. Mu Zhu, Universtity of Waterloo.
·                                 Small scale fluctuations statistics and multiscale simulations. Anne Bourlioux, University of Montreal.
·                                 Nick Barrowman
·                                 Gail Butler
·                                 Andre Dabrowski
·                                 Claude Girard
·                                 Suzelle Giroux
·                                 Hwashin Hyun Shin, Tim Ramsay, and Daniel Krewski
·                                 John Nash
·                                 Keith O’Rourke
·                                 Michèle Provencher
·                                 Dena Schanzer
·                                 Kathryn A. Williams
·                                 The Time-Series of SARS in the Eyes of Statisticians, Mathematical Modellers, Medical Doctors and the Public. Ping Yan, Health Canada
·                                 Assessment of Genetic Heterogeneity Using Regression Models for Allele Sharing. Shelly B. Bull, Mount Sinai Hospital and University of Toronto
·                                 Bounds on a Composite Measure of Linkage Disequilibrium: Application to Genetic Screening. David Hamilton, Dalhousie University; David Cole, University of Toronto
·                                 Application of DNA Microarray Technology in Environmental Health Sciences. Paul A. White, Health Canada; Andrew Williams, Health Canada
·                                 The Statistical Analysis of Quantitative Traits. J.C. Loredo-Osti, McGill University
 
 
·                                 R and Modern Statistical Computing. Robert Gentleman, Harvard School of Public Health.
·                                 Trends in statistical graphics. Leland Wilkinson, SPSS Inc.
·                                 An overview and categorization of downloadable statistical software. John Nash, University of Ottawa
Discussants
·                                 Jim Ramsay, McGill University
·                                 Jack Gambino, Statistics Canada
·                                 Robert Garrett, Natural Resources Canada
·                                 Statistical Evidence in the Federal Pay Equity Settlement. Alan Sunter and Paul Durber
·                                 Neyman-Pearson versus Health Policy: opportunities for professional statisticians. William Ross, Health Canada.
·                                 Spatial Statistical Analysis of Data using Geostatistical and GIS Tools. Noel Cressie, Ohio State University
·                                 Spatial/Environmental Assessment of Natural Resources using Information Theory. Michel Phipps, University of Ottawa
·                                 Accreditation for Statisticians in Canada. Sheryl Bartlett, Health Canada.
·                                 An Introduction to Small Area Estimation and its Practice at Statistics Canada. Jack Gambino and Peter Dick, Statistics Canada.
·                                 Some Recent Advances in Model-Based Small Area Estimation. J. N.K. Rao, Carleton University
·                                 Evaluating Small-Area Estimation of School-Age Children in Poverty in the U.S. Graham Kalton, Westat.
·                                 Design Consistent Small Area Estimates of Drug Use. Prevalence by Age Group for States. Ralph E. Folsom Research Triangle Institute.
·                                 Canada’s International Productivity Performance: Is there a Problem? Andrew Sharpe, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.