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STATS MATTERS & EVENTS

25 May 2023

Dear {Contact_First_Name},

I am writing today's newsletter all rugged up in front of the heater. I actually quite like the cold but detest Sydney houses which are just not made to withstand it at all. This cold weather is only fuelling my Brissy move dreams! 

There is the Statistical Consultant meet up tomorrow at lunchtime which is a space for statisticians to help each other out with problems that they aren’t sure how to deal with. We have new events from almost all branches (not SA!) and some feel good updates about recent events.

Have a lovely Friday and weekend. 

Kind regards,

Lizzy

Elizabeth Russell
                                                                        
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SSA Updates

SSA Office Closure 
The SSA Office will be closed from 27 April until 30 May 2023
while the Executive Officer is on leave.

60 statisticians for SSA's 60th Anniversary 
Last year, we celebrated SSA's 60th anniversary.  At the time, we published profiles of four of our members in Significance.  In tandem, we prepared a list of 60 Australian statisticans to highlight the diversity and breadth of our community.  This took longer to work through the editorial process, but we are pleased to finally have it published.  Happy 60th, SSA!

Workshop on Mathematical Engineering of Deep Learning  at Macquarie University Great Success! 

The workshop titled “CPD163 - Mathematical Engineering of Deep Learning - Part One Foundations” run by Prof. Benoit Liquet-Weiland and Dr Sarat Moka at Macquarie University on the 20th of April was a great success. Everyone spent the day learning about Neural Networks and how to implement different architectures in either R and/or Python (Python was definitely the preferred language by the participants). The participants range from HDR students to industry SSA members, the majority being so interested in the subject that the 5:00pm close of the workshop passed without anyone noticing. We are definitely looking forward to the next part of this workshop series on Deep Learning. 

NSW Branch May Event Recap on Dependence 

On Wednesday 17 May, Dr Gery Geenens and UNSW PhD student Qian Jin delivered captivating seminars at the NSW Branch May Event. The seminars were presented at UNSW and also streamed to an online audience. The theme of the evening was dependence!

Qian is a current research student in Statistics who is supervised by the NSW Branch president Dr Clara Grazian. Her talk was on "Generalized Partial Least Square with Deep Neural Networks". This was the first time that a "junior speaker" presented a talk before the main speaker. Qian discussed her work on the deep-GROC (DGROC) model which extends the generalized regression with orthogonal components (GROC) model by allowing different measures of dependence through their copula representation such as the Hellinger Correlation. 

This talk set the scene for Dr Geenens who presented "Towards a universal representation of statistical dependence". The talk started with a humorous discussion of the definition of dependence 'Two variables are dependent if they are not independent' (The Dictionary of Statistical Terms, Kendall and Buckland, 1971, 2006). Gery suggests that this "non-independence" definition is inadequate as often we are interested in measuring dependence. Gery then suggested a general definition of the dependence between two random variables and discussed his approach to defining a 'universal' representation of the dependence structure of any bivariate distribution, regardless of its nature (discrete, continuous, mixed, or hybrid).

Following, Gery's talk some members of the audience enjoyed dinner at a nearby restaurant and used way too many 'dependence puns' throughout the night.

Dr. Tom Stindl 

SSA Events

Statistical Consulting Network May Meet-Up

26 May 2023, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM AEST, held online

Come along with your thinking cap, maybe a problem, and some lunch!

The Statistical Consulting Network invites you to their monthly meet-up, a virtual lunchtime meeting where statisticians help each other out with problems that they aren’t sure how to deal with. This virtual meeting is held on Zoom at lunchtime on the last Friday of each month, 12:30-1:30 PM (AEDT). We start each meet-up with announcements, or occasionally a special topic discussion, then discuss problems that attendees have brought along with them.

We also have a Slack workspace where members of the consulting network can communicate between meetings, or post problems or relevant materials they would like to discuss during a meeting.

Zoom link

Slack Workspace link

ACSPRI Masterclasses in Choice Modelling

Masterclass 1: Fundamental of choice modelling, 29 - 30 May 2023, University of Queensland, Brisbane 

Masterclass 2: Applied modelling using Apollo, 1 - 2 June 2023, University of Queensland, Brisbane 

These two Masterclasses are presented by Stephane Hess. Stephane is one of the developers of the Apollo software – an R package for estimating choice models. Please use the links above for more information. 

ACSPRI offers discounted fees to individuals from member organisations and from non-profit organisations (for example, research organisations, public and private schools), and also to SSA members. Please contact Len Coote if you have questions about the courses or wish to obtain an SSA membership discount (l.coote@business.uq.edu.au).

Canberra Branch Meeting - Statistical methods for quantifying Empathic accuracy

30 May 2023, 5:45 PM – 7:00 PM (AEST)

Hybrid (in-person and on Zoom) 

Dr. Linh Nghiem, University of Sydney will speak that Empathic accuracy (EA) is the ability of one person to accurately understand the thoughts and emotions of others. A widely used computer-based paradigm to measure EA for a subject is to compare the subject’s continuous ratings of a target’s feelings with the ratings given by the target themselves. Nevertheless, current measures of EA are based only on pointwise comparison between the two curves. As a result, these measures are not reliable when misalignments occur in the observed curves, which arise commonly due to the nature of EA studies.

To get for information, get the zoom link or sign up for the dinner click here. 

SSA Vic & Tas May Event: What's new in the tidyverse? by Professor Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel

30 May 2023, 6:00 PM (AEST)

WEHI Auditorium, Parkville 

SSA Vic & Tas and R-Ladies Melbourne are pleased to hold a joint event on Tue 30th May 6pm to welcome Professor Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel to talk to us about tidyverse. The event will be held in-person as well as online via Zoom. We look forward to seeing you there! 

To register click here.

SSA WA: Perth Biostats/Bioinfo Meetup 2023

13 Jun 2023, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM (AWST)

McCusker Auditorium, Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research (North),  Nedlands

We're pleased to invite you to the Perth Biostatistics/Bioinformatics Meetup. This is a joint event supported by the WA Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia (SSA), the SSA Biostatistics and Bioinformatics SectionClinical Trials Enablement Platform WA (CTEP-WA), Perth Epidemiological Group (PEG), and the WA Health Translation Network (WAHTN). 

The purpose of this event is to bring together those with expertise and/or interest in medical and healthcare statistics in Perth. It is an opportunity to socialise and network, and encourage upcoming professionals to pursue a career in this worthwhile field.

There will be three invited speakers this evening: Dr Rich Edwards (UWA) and two researchers from Biometrics at Telethon Kids Institute.

To register click here.

SSA ECSSN and NZSA joint webinar

Much more than just fitting models - perspective from an applied statistical scientist, presented by Olivia Angelin-Bonnet.

June 22, 2023 2pm AEST, 4PM NZST

In this talk, She will be giving an overview of her role as a statistical scientist working in the fields of Systems Biology and multi-omics integration. In particular, she will discuss how being an applied data scientist is about much more than just fitting models. Olivia will talk about how modern statistician and data science roles involve working with big and messy datasets, developing complex analysis pipelines, communicating results through reports and presentations, and implementing tools for disseminating our work. A number of principles and tools (e.g. data and code versioning, unit testing, workflow management systems) can support us through these activities to ensure our work is sustainable and reproducible. She will argue that mastering these principles is rapidly becoming a core competency for the modern statistical scientist. 

To register click here.

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