Announcing the April meeting of the WA Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia. Our guest speaker is Dr John Henstridge, Managing Director of Data Analysis Australia.

Date: Tuesday, 9 April 2024.

Time: 6:00PM to 7:00PM (AWST)

Location: Cheryl Praeger Lecture Room, The University of Western Australia.

Presentation

Models for Alcohol Effects: Liquor Outlets, Social Issues and Potential Harm

Whilst the harms caused by alcohol are often highly visible, the mechanism and detail of the effects is much less clear. Explorations of the effects are essentially statistical (or epidemiological) since harm is typically evidenced through increases in the level of health conditions or incidences of crime or misbehaviour. Once particular area of study is the effect of liquor outlets and whether they can be shown to affect the level of harm. Such studies have often been cited in legal cases, commonly in the context of an application for a new liquor licence.

Data Analysis Australia has reviewed many such studies, highlighting major statistical deficiencies in almost all. Recently we were asked to carry out our own such study to demonstrate how the methodology might be improved to overcome the many problems. This has involved a reasonably large dataset and a number of innovative steps in setting up a model, perhaps an order of magnitude more sophisticated than any previous study. The result demonstrates that better models are feasible and it throws more doubt upon the validity of previous studies. This work was done with a number of other Data Analysis Australia staff.

About the Speaker

Dr John Henstridge, Data Analysis Australia

John Henstridge is the founder, Managing Director and Chief Statistician of Data Analysis Australia. Prior to setting up Data Analysis Australia in 1988 he worked and the University of Western Australia and the CSIRO offshoot Siromath. As a statistician John has covered many areas ranging from his original specialties of signal processing and statistical computing through to sampling, predictive model building and large data. He is a Chartered Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society, an Accredited Statistician of the Statistical Society of Australia and a past president of the Statistical Society of Australia.

Refreshments and Dinner

Members and visitors are invited to mingle over wine and cheese from 5:30PM onwards at the venue. Following the meeting all are invited to dine at a nearby restaurant. Visitors are welcome.

Meeting Directions

The Cheryl Praeger Lecture Room is located on the ground floor of the Mathematics building at The University of Western Australia. Its entrance is on the northern side of the building. See: UWA Maps, Google Maps.

Parking is free on the UWA Crawley campus after 5:00PM. A convenient place to park is Car Park 18 accessible from Fairway Entry 1.

For further information please contact the WA Branch Secretary (ssa.wa.secretary@gmail.com).