Canberra Branch Meeting -- The practitioner’s guide to machine learning quality in the ABS

SSA Canberra invites you to its August branch meeting of 2023, which is joint with the ABS, and will feature Edwin Lu and Nelson Chua from ABS present on the topic of "The practitioner’s guide to machine learning quality in the ABS"

Time: Start at 5:30pm and finish by 6:45pm Canberra time.

Venue: Hybrid meeting, which you can either attend at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Knibbs theatre, or attend via zoom. For in-person attendance, please RSVP by 5pm Monday 28 August by entering your details on the SSA Canberra meeting and dinner attendance sheet, or contacting warren.muller@csiro.au.

For in-person attendance, ABS staff will be on site to assist with accessing facilities if needed.

Dinner: After the talk we will be holding a dinner at 7.00pm at Punjabi Junction, 57 Benjamin Way, Belconnen ACT (https://www.punjabijunction.com.au).

NOTE: We are offering discounts to SSA early career and student members who attend dinner! For this meeting, dinners will be a fixed charge of $10 for student members and $20 for early career members. 

Talk details

Speaker: Edwin Lu, ABS and Nelson Chua, ABS and ANU

Topic: The practitioner’s guide to machine learning quality in the ABS

Abstract: In recent years, the ABS has increased its use of machine learning to assist with the production of official statistics. To support this increased uptake, we have devised practical recommendations to ensure the quality of machine learning outputs, promote consistency in the use of machine learning, and help build machine learning capability in the ABS. In our presentation, we will outline some aspects of machine learning quality that are of general interest. We will also highlight some technical insights drawn from recent research findings in the literature, covering topics such as distribution-free prediction intervals, how to select performance metrics for classifiers, and some model-agnostic interpretability methods. Feedback on our findings and recommendations is very welcome.

Biography: 

Edwin Lu is an Assistant Director in the ABS Methodology Futures section. His background is in Actuarial Studies, Mathematics, and Statistics.

Nelson Chua is a part-time ABS methodologist in the Methodology Futures section, full-time statistics PhD student at the ANU, and first-time Assistant Secretary for the SSA Canberra Council.

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Website links: https://statsoc.org.au/Canberra-Branch-meetings