Thank you for submitting an Invited Paper Session (IPS) proposal for the virtual WSC 2021. Your proposal is under consideration by the Scientific Programme Committee (SPC). By March, you will receive an email informing you whether your proposal has been accepted as an IPS. You will then be prompted to make a couple of other choices related to the nature of the accepted IPS. Subsequently, speakers will be prompted to register and submit their abstracts. If the SPC does not recommend that your proposal be included in the programme as an IPS, your speakers will have the option to submit their work through the CPS submission system as individual submissions. These again then will be assessed by the SPC.
Once again, we thank you for proposing an IPS for the virtual WSC 2021.
International Association of Survey Statisticians: December 2020 Newsletter
In this newsletter we inform you about three invited session proposals for the World Statistics Congress 2021 that are supported by the IASS and list upcoming conferences.
Links to more information:
The July 2020 issue of The Survey Statistician (TSS) is available at The Survey Statistician | International Association of Survey Statisticians (IASS) (isi-iass.org). The TSS is an open access journal. If you would like to contribute an article to the Ask the Experts, New and Emerging Methods, and Book and Software Review sections please approach the editors or James Chipperfield (email below)
Please feel free to send items to publish in future IASS newsletters to James Chipperfield at james.chipperfield@abs.gov.au
ISI World Statistics Congress 2021 – Invited Session Proposals
If you are an IASS member and have submitted an ISP, please let James Chipperfield and Monica Pratesi know. They are trying to keep track of them. The IASS EC has assisted the UNSD Inter-secretariat Working Group on Household Surveys on their ISP submission called Big Data for Official Statistics – Tips, Tricks and Techniques. There are three ISPs for the WSC 2021 that are supported by the IASS. For your information the sessions’ titles and contributors are listed below:
Women in survey sampling research and practice: The proposed session is inspired by the celebrations of the ISI for the International Year of Women in Statistics and Data Science. The session would like to give to women engaged in survey statistics in different parts of the world a dedicated showcase for their high-level research and practice. Three women have accepted to give a presentation at this session, on different topics concerning survey sampling: Frauke Kreuter (University of Maryland, USA), Claudia Rivera Rodriguez (University of Auckland, New Zealand), and Anne Ruiz-Gazen (University of Toulouse 1, France). The broad diversity of topics addressed by the speakers (as their research interests provided below show) underline their contribution to a domain where women remain underrepresented around the world.
Counting People with Administrative Data instead of a Traditional Census: The count of people or households in a nation, by basic demographic and geographic characteristics, are foundational statistics that support a nation’s key decisions. These counts are often estimated by National Statistical Institutes (NSI) by conducting a traditional population Census- while these counts are of high quality, they are very costly owing to the need for a large workforce to, for example, collect data directly from households. In contrast, administrative data are relatively inexpensive to collect and often contain basic demographic and geographic characteristics. The key problem with counting a population using administrative data is that they not cover all people in a nation (under-coverage) and some administrative records belong to people who no longer reside in the nation (over-coverage). This invited session has speakers from the NSIs of Israel, United Kingdom, and Italy who will discuss alternative frameworks to address this problem and will present recent results.
The Evolution of the 21st Century Census: Census statistics are the foundation of a nation’s decision-making. In many countries, censuses are evolving towards increasing reliance on administrative data. The cycle of population censuses remains a core activity of National Statistics Institutes (NSI) and this session will focus on the role of NSI’s research in census evolution into the future and highlight the associated statistical challenges. This session will also include reflections on how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the path of this evolution.
SAE2021- BigSmall – Conference on Small Area Estimation, with the theme “Big Data for Small Areas”, will be held on 5-7 July 2021 in Naples, Italy, as a satellite conference to the World Statistics Congress 2021. Website: https://sae2020.org/
Summer School on Survey Statistics 2020 was planned to be held on 24–28 August this year in Minsk, Belarus but it has been postponed to 2021. Details to be announced. Website: https://wiki.helsinki.fi/display/BNU/Events.
11e Colloque International Francophone sur les Sondages – 11th International Francophone Conference on Surveys will take place on 6-8 October 2021 in Brussels, Belgium. Website: http://sondages2020.sciencesconf.org.
Other Conferences on survey statistics and related areas
BigSurv20 – Big Data Meets Survey Science will be held virtually during November and December. Website: https://www.bigsurv20.org
Conference and Special Issue of Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A in memory of Fred Smith and Chris Skinner will be held in Southampton, UK, on 8‐10 July 2021. See the August 2020 IASS Newsletter for full details.
63rd ISI World Statistics Congress will take place on 11-16 July 2021 and will be virtual. Website: https://www.isi2021.org/
The TIES 2020 virtual conference entitled “Frontiers in Statistics, Epidemiology and the Environment” will be held on 2-4 December 2020, using the Zoom platform. All details about the event, and the conference programme can be found on the TIES website. You should register prior to the conference to receive access information via Zoom. We hope to meet you at the conference!
The TIES-Wiley Best student presentation award will be awarded at the Conference. Please invite your students to participate! All the information about deadlines and procedures for the award can be found here.
The WSC, organized by ISI and its Associations (TIES being one of them), will be held on 11-16 July 2021. The congress will be held virtually. The call for Invited Session Proposals is open now. Please contact Ayesha Ali (aali@uoguelph.ca), the TIES representative on the SPC, if you want to organize a Session for this conference on behalf of TIES. The deadline for proposals is 30 November.
The Abdel El-Shaarawi Early Investigator (AEEI) Award was established by the TIES Board in order to recognize and honor early investigators who have made outstanding contributions to the development of statistical and/or quantitative approaches for research in the environmental sciences. The prestigious AEEI award 2021 will be granted to a researcher, who is a TIES member for the years 2020 and 2021, and has received their PhD within 12 years of the submission deadline (15 February 2021).
The award ceremony will be held at the TIES 2021 Conference after the nominee’s scientific presentation. The award carries with it: a certificate and free registration for the TIES 2021 conference. The award is made solely based on nominations received by the President of TIES before 15 February 2021. The detailed criteria and nomination form, which includes information on the requirements for the nomination and submission details, is available at the following link: http://www.environmetrics.org/AEEI2021.html
In this email, we cover upcoming deadlines for IAOS activities, highlights of the recent IAOS webinars, key decisions made in the recent IAOS Executive Committee meeting, and an update on the SJIAOS.
Upcoming deadlines
Nominations for the 2021-2023 IAOS Executive close 20 November
The Nominations Committee chaired by Mario Palma is still seeking nominations for the 2021-2023 Executive, which will be led by President Elect Misha Belkindas. Submissions should contain the CV and contact details of the proposed candidates and be sent to contactiaos@gmail.com by 20 November.
2021 World Statistical Congress –Invited Paper Session Proposals close 30 November 2020
The 63rd ISI World Statistical Congress 2021 will be a virtual event, to be held from 11 – 16 July 2021. Proposals close on 30 November 2020, through the submission system – see https://www.isi2021.org/. Contact Jan Robert Suesser (jrsues@wanadoo.fr), IAOS representative on the Scientific Programme Committee for more information.
Since early October, IAOS has coordinated a range of webinars, which despite the busy international webinar agenda have enjoyed active support. These have included:
IAOS and IASS Joint webinar to celebrate World Statistics Day: On the importance to Society of High Quality Public Statistics – 5 November 2020
Eurostat and SCORUS: Regional and local statistics for more informed policy making – 26 – 27 October 2020
New World Order and Official Statistics in Nigeria – 22 October 2020
Misuse of Statistics: Time to Speak Out – 6 October 2020
Do you have an idea for a webinar related to current issues in official statistics? IAOS, with the support of the ISI Permanent Office are looking for ideas for webinars in early 2021. Please send suggestions, including possible speakers to ContactIAOS@gmail.com
Key decisions made by the Executive Committee
Zambia 2020 Conference
The Executive confirmed the importance of holding the Zambia 2020 conference, as soon as practical. The Executive, in conjunction with the ISI and the Zambia Statistics office, expect to make a decision in early 2021.
Follow up on Misuse of Statistics webinar
The Executive is actively looking at ways to progress many of the fundamental issues discussed in the Misuse of Statistics webinar. This will include articles in the March 2021 issue of the SJIAOS, as well as another webinar. If you want to contribute, or have ideas on how the IAOS can progress this work, contact John Pullinger at ContactIAOS@gmail.com. Possible contributions to the SJIAOS on this topic should be sent to the SJIAOS editor at pevssjiaos@gmail.com
Membership – and outstanding Membership fees
The Executive reviewed the latest report from the ISI Permanent Office on membership. While membership numbers are up slightly since the previous year, a number of people have not yet paid their membership fees for 2020. If this applies to you, please renew as soon as possible. Remember our membership fees are key to many of our activities including the YSP, running of webinars, planning and preparation for conferences.
Upcoming SJIAOS issues
December 2020, Volume 36, Issue 4
The issue includes articles on Covid-19, in particular the impact on official statistics production. In parallel there is a discussion on this item on the Official Statistics discussion platform (www.officialstatistics.com). Other articles in the December issue include a section with 13 papers from younger official statisticians from the Asia-Pacific Statistics week, a section on ’Governing by the numbers (Data4Policy)’, along with three of the winning manuscripts from the 2020 YSP. Beyond these, some 15 more articles deal with a variety of topics. This issue also includes an article closing the first discussion (“You say you want a [data] Revolution”) of the Official Statistics discussion platform.
Supplement to Volume 36: Extra issue in 2020 ‘‘Official Statistics in Africa’
While the 2020 Zambia conference has been delayed, it was decided to go ahead with an extra issue of the Journal to not lose the momentum of the extra attention on statistics in Africa. This extra issue contains around 15 manuscripts from the African region. These will be pre-published (on-line) on the Journal’s website and it is expected that the paper issue of the supplement of the Vol 36 of the Journal will also be available at the end of the 4th quarter of 2020.
Call for Papers for future SJIAOS issues
The SJIAOS welcomes papers for future issues. If you have a possible paper, or even an idea for a paper, contact Pieter Everaers, the SJIAOS editor at pevssjiaos@gmail.com.
Remember that the Discussion platform is the ideal venue to discuss and debate many of the current issues in official statistics. Discussions are based on statements from key papers in the SJIAOS. In June a discussion on ‘Pre-release access to official statistics is not consistent with professional ethics’was launched. This was followed in September by two discussions – ‘Crises, politics and statistics: Official statistics in the context of the Covid-19 crisis’ and a discussion on ‘The Future of economic statistics’.
The December issue of the SJIAOS will also launch a discussion on‘Successes and challenges of regional cooperation and capacity building in Statistics: the example of the Asia-Pacific region’.
It seems that the number of Invited Paper Sessions (IPSs) for the virtual ISI WSC 2021 submitted so far is quite low. The submission deadline has therefore been extended until 30th November.
If you have not yet submitted your IPS proposal, please make sure you do so by 30th November. Also, please encourage any interested colleagues to submit their proposals. More proposals would be more than welcome.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me (see the e-mail address below).
Note that all Organisers, Chairs, Presenters and Discussants of any session must be registered participants of the WSC. Exceptions may be granted to Organisers who are unable to attend, but not to individuals in any of the other roles.
three speakers and one discussant (25 mins per talk and 15 mins discussion), or
three speakers and no discussant (30 mins per talk including Q&A)
IP sessions (60 minutes long) can have two speakers (30 mins per talk). Panel sessions are also possible (60 mins or 90 mins).
Proposals require the following information:
Session Title – description
Connection to ISI, Associations or Committees
Organiser – name, affiliation, contact information
Session Chair – name, affiliation, contact information
For each speaker,
Name, affiliation, contact information
Title of talk (if appropriate – not needed for panel)
The selection criteria will take into account scientific quality, impact, and overall diversity. Strong proposals will have speakers confirming their willingness to participate should the programme be accepted. The best proposals will include participants that reflect the diversity of ISI including age, gender and country/region. Note that speakers can only speak in one session.
When submitting a proposal, you should indicate to which of the ISI Associations your session is related.
Accepted Invited Sessions will be held either live-streamed or pre-recorded, details will be given later. The pre-recorded sessions will have a time to have live interactions with attendees. The SPC will determine which IPS will be offered in which modality, but all submissions should be willing to do either.
Live-streamed
Real-time (synchronous) sessions will be scheduled each day. This time block is necessarily limited, given the desire to reach out to all time zones. It will last two and a half hours from 14:00 to 16:30 Central European Summer Time. The relevant times are:
Country
Start
End
West Coast USA
05:00
07:30
The Netherlands
14:00
16:30
Japan
21:00
23:30
Australia (Sydney)
22:00
00:30
New Zealand
00:00
02:30
Pre-recorded
Asynchronous, pre-recorded sessions will be released each day during the conference. Opportunities to interact with presenters either live or via chat will be available.
Now, more than ever, we depend on all kinds of sustained and dedicated service by colleagues. To mark exceptional service and to also honour Willem van Zwet, who served Bernoulli Society and its aims in many special ways, the Bernoulli Society is launching the Willem van Zwet Medal for special service to the Bernoulli Society.
The Willem van Zwet Medal will be awarded biennially. For further details please visit the Willem van Zwet Medal webpage, where you will find instructions on how to make nominations. If you know of someone who has provided remarkable service to the Bernoulli Society, then please do consider nominating them for the first instance of this biennial award.
Please send your nominations according to the instructions given on the website to Wilfrid Kendall (Committee Chair) <w.s.kendall@warwick.ac.uk>
The deadline for nominations is 15 March 2021, noon GMT.
With most cordial best wishes,
Claudia Klüppelberg President of the Bernoulli Society
I would like to inform you about the following webinars organized by ISBIS (and y-BIS, the young statisticians’ section) and I invite you to attend them:
Leading Women in Business and Industrial Statistics
22 January, 16.00-17.00 CET (Roma, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam) Katie Ensor (Rice University, USA; ASMBI Editor; ASA President-Elect) “Quantitative Finance and the Critical Role of Statistics and Data Science” Register at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8259947375344710668
19 February, 16.00-17.00 CET (Roma, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam) Bonnie Ray (Vice President, Data Science, Talkspace, USA) “A statistician reads the news: Statistics and data science challenges in content analytics” Register at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8857164708316001549
y-BIS Data Science in Industry Webinar
28 January, 21.00-23.00 CET (Roma, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam) Maxine Qian, Data Scientist, Pinterest, USA “3 Ways to Improve Offline Experiment Sensitivity” Jennifer Zhu, Deep Learning Scientist, Amazon, USA “Using Artificial Intelligence to Automate Clinical Workflows” Melanie Palmer, Senior Data Scientist, T-Mobile, USA “Reshaping Refunds with Data Science: How Text Analytics Uncovers Pain Points to Improve Customer Experience” Register at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2528317504717673997
I would like also to inform you that it is possible to watch the video of the first webinar of the series on Leading Women in Business and Industrial Statistics:
Antonietta Mira (Universita’ della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland, and Universita’ dell’Insubria, Italy), Federica Bianchi (University of Glasgow, UK) “The social structure of financial networks” https://bit.ly/35Wi4Eb
