The following workshop, organised by the Statistical Society of Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, will be held on 30 September 2019 in Canberra:

Maximising the use of Australian Bureau of Statistics Data Products and Analysis Tools

With one of the original two presenters of this workshop no longer available we are now planning on having several presenters to cover the same content:

Cassandra Elliott (ABS)
Cassandra has 14 years experience in population and social statistics at the ABS. Cassandra is currently leading the development of the 2020-21 National Health Survey and the Intergenerational Health and Mental Health Study planned for 2022.

Jennifer Marley (ABS)
Since finishing her Bachelor of Mathematics degree, Jennifer Marley has followed an interesting career trajectory at the ABS for the last 11 years.  She has worked on statistical data confidentiality, conducted research into the utilisation of novel data sources (most notably satellite remote sensing data for estimating agricultural statistics) and led the development of microdata products from the Multi-Agency Data Integration Project integrated data asset.  She is currently a Principal Data Scientist in the Machine Intelligence and Novel Data Sources or MINDS team, which leads the cutting edge data science research at the ABS.

Gwenda Thompson (ABS)
Gwenda Thompson has a PhD in statistics and has worked at the ABS for 9 years.  She was part of the teams that developed the confidentiality modules for SurveyTable builder and a new data linking method.  She is currently managing various data linkage projects.  Prior to the ABS, Gwenda worked in the IT industry in London and the USA for over 10 years.

Jenny Welsh (ANU)
Jenny Welsh is an epidemiologist with 10 years of experience working with health-related datasets, including large-scale, linked data and longitudinal survey data.  Jenny is currently employed at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University working on research related to the Linked Data for Better Health project.

Ian Rayson (ABS)
Ian Rayson has 10 years experience as a statistical methodologist at the ABS. Ian is currently Assistant Director of the Health National Statistics Centre, leading a team producing health statistics for small geographic areas.

James Brown (UTS) (The second original presenter)
James is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (Member and then Chair of the Official Statistics Committee, 2010 to 2012) and Member of the British Society for Population Studies. He also served as a member of the ESRC Grants Assessment Panel B in the UK prior to joining UTS.

The one-day workshop will have two components. First, it will provide an overview of the wide variety of data sources from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that are available for analysts. These sources include our 5-yearly Census, survey data, administrative data, and in particular, linked data. A demonstration of the ABS Table Builder and Data Lab products - platforms for analysts to remotely undertake bespoke analyses using ABS data - will be given. Several case studies will provide examples of the many innovative ways analysts are making use of ABS data for their projects. Second, it will focus on how Table Builder can produce data-cubes for a standard analysis in R. This will then extend to creating large data- cubes suitable for mixed models using the ‘LME4’ package in R.

This second component of the workshop will conclude with discussion of Poisson-gamma models, which have additional advantages in this type of data framework.

For more information and to register, please click here. Registrations close on 23 September 2019.

Kind regards

Marie-Louise Rankin
Executive Officer, SSA