[Cowystats] ASA Chapter Information - Spring Meeting - April 21st + more

[Matt Pocernich]

++ Spring meeting announcement - April 21st - Boulder
++ Dennis Cox at Colorado School of Mines, April 21st.
++ Request for a statistical perspective on Colorado's voting system


++ Colorado/ Wyoming ASA Spring Meeting

Details for the spring meeting are still being finalized, but here
are some preliminary details.  The meeting is being held at the National
Center for Atmospheric Research's Mesa Lab in Boulder.  For those of
you who haven't been here, this is an absolutely beautiful
location.  The  meeting begins at 9:30- 4pm. For those interested, a
tour of the equest for a statistical perspective on Colorado's voting system begins at 9 am.  For those interested in staying
afterwards, drinks and refreshments will be served at 4 pm.  Assuming
it will be nice out, we can have them outside.

Our membership has a broad range of interests and backgrounds, so
selecting speakers is always difficult. This year an emphasis has
been placed on talks aimed at a wide range of statistical interests.

**** Invited Speakers

Steve Sain - University of Colorado - Denver

Steve's talk provides an overview of models for spatial lattice 
data with an application to climate. There are some other applications
that might also be - moose counts in Alaska, police racial profiling.

Dennis Cox - Rice University, Texas

Probability Calibration -- How statisticians can assess if the
probability forecasts are correct ("P-CAP," aised with a switch to newer balloting technologies as well as the for voting systems used in Colorado.  This issue has been a request for a statistical perspective on the testing Calibration
Assessment Plots). (Note, Dennis Cox will also be speaking in the
afternoon at the School of Mines in Golden - see below.)

Katerina Kechris - University of Colorado Health Science Center

"Statistical Methods in Bioinformatics"

In the last few decades, new experimental technology in the life sciences
has created an exponentially growing quantity of biological data. The
challenge for the statistics community is to organize this increasing
amount of knowledge to help answer questions about biological systems and
processes. This talk presents an overview of statistical methods in
several areas of bioinformatics research.

Thomas Lee - Colorado State University

Pattern Generation using Likelihood Inference for Cellular Automata

Abstract:
Cellular automata (CA) is a dynamical system that evolves on a
discrete lattice.  In this talk CA is applied to model and generate
various binary image textures.  The idea is to, given an observed
binary texture image, estimate the unknown CA "rule" that generated
the image.  As to be demonstrated in this talk, this estimation
problem can be posted as a statistical model selection problem, and
the minimum description length principle is adopted to provide a
solution.

**** Tour of NCAR's visualization lab*

Back by popular demand, a demonstration of NCAR's VisLab
The VisLab is a state-of-the-art scientific visualization environment,
providing an immersive environment for visualizing complex datasets in
stereo-3D and collaborating across sites via AccessGrid video
teleconferencing. From a statistical perspective, the VisLab allows
data to be illustrated with both motion and depth.  before the main
meeting starts, a 30 minute demonstration will be held from 9 - 9:30.

More information on the VisLab can be found at

http://www.vets.ucar.edu/Vislab/index.shtml
http://www.vets.ucar.edu/vg/index.shtml

****  The list of student speakers is still being completed.  We are
hoping to get participation from each university in the chapter.

Additionally, other topics to be discussed at the meeting include
++ Chapter elections
++ A summary of the chapter's K-12 outreach efforts
++ Maurice Davies Awards


Directions to NCAR are found at
Where: National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesa Lab
http://www.eo.ucar.edu/visit/

#####################

Dennis Cox - Colorado School of Mines -

Friday April 21st 3:00-3:50pm at Chauvenet 143.
Title to be announced.

Dr. Cox's visit to Colorado is sponsored by the School of Mines.
While this gives us the opportunity to have Dennis speak at the
chapter meeting in the morning, it creates a conflict in the
afternoon.  On the bright side of things, there is no reason
not to see a interesting statistical talk on the 21st.  



++ Request for a statistical perspective on Colorado's voting system

I received a request for a statistical perspective on the testing
requirements for voting systems used in Colorado.  This issue has been
raised with a switch to newer balloting technologies as well as the
use of mail only elections.  The issue of balloting accuracy is also
complicated by the fact that ballots must remain anonymous. Other
statistical issues include quality control and statistical process
control.  If this topic interests you, please contact

Al Kolwicz
CAMBER - Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results
2867 Tincup Circle
Boulder, CO 80305
303-494-1540
AlKolwicz at ests you, please contact.net
www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz
www.coloradovoter.blogspot. Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results


-- 
Matt Pocernich
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Research Applications Laboratory
(303) 497-8312