ISSN 0112-2649stats.org.nz

The New Zealand Statistical Association

NewsletterNumber 80 February 2018

Welcomes

• Welcome from the President• Editorial

Conferences

• NZSA 2017• NZSA 2018

Obituary

John Koolaard

From the NZSA executive

• Statement on sexual harassment• NZSA support for Greek Statistician

Stories of Interest

• NZSA 2017 awards• R Users groups• Canterbury Data Event - Analytics Forum• Student & Early Career update

Stats Education News

• Statistics Education Group• NZSA Education Committee

Local News

Statistics at:• AgResearch• AUT: Biostatistics• AUT: School of Engineering, Computer and

Mathematical Sciences• Department of Conservation• Massey University: Palmerston North• Plant and Food• The University of Auckland• University of Otago: Department of

Mathematics and Statistics• University of Otago: Division of Health

Sciences• University of Waikato

Welcome

by IAN WESTBROOKE

NZSA President

I open on a sad note - marking the passing ofour colleague John Koolaard. I sent the followingmessage to his family:

On behalf of the New ZealandStatistical Association, I extend oursincere condolences. John was avery well liked and highly respectedstatistician, who was always friendlyand kind. John will be missed as acolleague and friend by us all.

A tribute to John is here.

I trust you all have had a good break and are readyfor the challenges of the new year. I was fortunateto attend the SEEM conference in Queenstown,fitting 5 days on the Routeburn and Greenstonetracks before it; and enjoying the NZSA/IASCconference immediately after. It was great to seeso many statisticians there.

On another more sober note, sexual harassmentissues have been highlighted not only in theentertainment but also the statistical communityinternationally. The statement which NZSA sent toall members can be read here.

Best wishes for 2018.

Ian

2

Editorial

by MARIE FITCH

Kia ora koutou,

I hope the New Year has started well for you.January began for me with an awesome five dayswalking the Old Ghost Road in the North Westof the South Island. We try to include a tramp(usually South Island) in our summer holiday eachyear. I always enjoy the scenery, the birds (thisyear many very friendly robins and cheeky weka)not to mention the chance to breathe in that freshmountain air.

As always, thanks to those who have found time inthe pre-Christmas rush or these early days backat work to contribute to this newsletter. It isgreat to see the increase in contributions includingnew columns from the Student and Early CareerNetwork and the R User groups. I would also liketo acknowledge the contributions made by JohnKoolaard over several years to this newsletter asthe contributor of the AgResearch news. A tributeto John is here.

The next newsletter is planned for June so if youhave ideas or contributions for it please contactme, preferably by the end of May.

Nga mihi o te Tau Hou ki a koutou katoa,

Marie

View out towards Murchison from Old Ghost Road

3

Conferences

2017 NZSA Conference

by THOMAS YEE (GENERAL CHAIR)

The Joint NZSA+IASC-ARS+ORSNZ Conferencewas held at the Owen G. Glenn Business SchoolBuilding of the University of Auckland from 10–14December. The conference was attended by around350 delegates which was about double the usualnumber. The approximate numbers of the biggestgroups were NZ (110+), Japan (60), Korea (41),Taiwan (19), Australia (14), Hong Kong (11).More unusually, there was a group of delegatesfrom the Philippines (6), and participants from asfar as Denmark, Romania, and Switzerland. As theconference marked the retirement of Ross Ihaka(one of the two co-founders of R) and was jointwith the International Association of StatisticalComputing (Asian Regional Section), there was astrong R flavour throughout.

The main conference was preceded by Rworkshops for women (on Thursday) and for Year12 girls (on Friday) by Hadley Wickham (Rstudio)and Dianne Cook (Monash University), and thenby four half-day workshops centered on R (byAucklanders Thomas Lumley, Paul Murrell, RolfTurner, Chris Wild) held on the Sunday.

The keynote speakers included Ross Ihaka, whogave an overview of how R was developed andfuture directions; Jenny Bryan from Universityof British Columbia and RStudio; Simon Urbanekfrom AT&T Labs in the US; and Luke Tierney from

R core. A special session was held in honour ofProfessor Alastair Scott who passed away earlierin the year, and John Neuhaus (UCSF, USA)featured as one of the speakers. Alan Gelfand(Duke University, USA) also gave a plenary talk.

There were 222 invited and contributed talks byacademics, students and practitioners from NZand abroad. Most were presented in one of sevenparallel streams!

We thank the many people who made theconference a success. At the risk of inadvertentlymissing some names we wish to especially thankthe following people: Ciprian Giurcaneanuwho led the Scientific Programme Committee,James Curran who headed the Local OrganisingCommittee, Abhinav Chopra for his IT work,Rolf Turner for his administrative work, LisaHall who organized the Monday evening eventfor early career and student statisticians, thesix workshop presenters, Tessa Lloyd-Hagemannand her Event Services team, photographersHarold Henderson and Wai Loong Tham, NZSAExecutive Committee members for support, andthe student helpers who were led by Liza Boltonand Matt Regan. Last but not least, we areindebted to our sponsors (ANZJS, HarmonicAnalytics, IASC-ARS, ISBA, Minitab, NZSA, SAS,and Wiley) for their generous financial support.

4

Photo by Wai Loong Tham

See more photos from the 2017 conference:https://www.flickr.com/photos/111101747@N06/sets/72157663632210687and https://www.nzsa2017.com/photos/

A report on (and photograph of) the recipients ofthe three NZSA awards can be found later in theNewsletter, here.

Harmonic Analytics Student talk award winners:Timothy Bilton (U. Otago), Tom Elliott (U. Auck),

Andrea Havron (U. Auck), Sih-Jing Liao (Massey).

Student talk high commendations: Losana VaoLatu Latu (U. Cantab), Sarah Sonal (U. Cantab),Oliver Stevenson (U. Auck).

Student talk award winners (from left): Andrea, Sih-Jing, Timothy, Tom, Martin Hazelton (Awards Committeeconvenor), Lisa Chen (Harmonic Analytics, sponsor), Oliver, Sarah, Losana

5

2018 NZSA Conference

The 2018 NZSA conference will be held at thePalmerston North campus of Massey Universityfrom 27 to 30 November. Principal organisersare Jonathan Godfrey and Rina Parry. Rina andJonathan ask you to note the dates in your diariesnow. They want to let you know that we will startin the early afternoon of the 27th and finish atlunchtime on the 30th so that there is plenty oftime to travel on the day, rather than eat into yourweekends. The website should be up and runningduring soon and guest speakers will be announcedthroughout the build-up. While a formal themehas not yet been decided, Rina and Jonathan haveposed the question, “Are we changing the face ofstatistics or just getting older?”

PN has dozens of accommodation options,including modern On-Campus facilities for thoseof you that wish to walk to the conference sessions.There are numerous flights from Auckland eachday, several from Christchurch and daily servicesto/from Hamilton for those attendees who wish toenjoy the aerial view of the Central Plateau. PN hasthe full range of restaurant options on offer andthere are plenty of walking tracks on and aroundcampus to help you get out and enjoy the clean airof the Manawatu.

6

Obituary: John Koolaard

by MARYANN STAINCLIFFE

John Koolaard 19 July 1965 - 11 January 2018

It was with great sadness that we said goodbye to avalued friend, colleague and statistician who diedafter a battle with cancer. John began his statisticscareer at Massey University, winning the studentprize at the 1995 NZSA conference for his talk on“Regularised discriminant analysis”. This was thetopic of his PhD that was awarded in 1997.

In 1996 he began working at Crop & Foodbefore moving to AgResearch in 2005, based atGrasslands campus in Palmerston North. In 2007,he become the Team leader for the statistics teambased at Grasslands, and continued in this roleuntil taking sick leave at the end of 2016. Duringhis time on sick leave he remained part of theteam, attending team meetings and supportingothers around him.

As colleagues we will remember John as a calm,cheerful, honest and very friendly person. He wasa great team leader, involving the Grassland teammembers in various discussions as often as hecould. These included discussions on how bestto analyse certain data that came our way and ofcourse discussions on various management issues

such as budgeting, conference attendance, projecthandling, AgResearch leadership and how tohandle ‘challenging clients’. John was an excellentstatistician with a wide range of capabilities. Mostof all, he was someone who simply got on withwork but with care and patience.

The scientists that John worked with all havepositive words to say about him, describing himas a really nice guy who was enjoyable to workwith, acting with humour and empathy. Theyalso describe him as an expert in his professionalfield and a “patient champion of statistics” who isforever helpful and insightful.

John was always open about his Christian beliefsand allowed them to guide his character. It is thisfaith that gave him and his family strength andresolve in his final days. May he rest in peace inHeaven.

Participants in the student prize, 1995 NZSAconference.From left to right, back row: Ray Hoare(Hoare Research Software, sponsor), John Koolaard(winner), Chris Stephens (highly commended),Mahammad Salehi, Sifa Mvoi, Front: James Curran,Andrew Balemi.

7

From the NZSA executive

Statement on sexual harassment

Sexual harassment issues have been highlightednot only in the entertainment industry but also thestatistical community internationally. NZSA sentthe following statement to all members and to theANZSTAT mailing list in response:

The officers and executive of theNew Zealand Statistical Associationtake very seriously the reports ofinappropriate behaviour towardscolleagues, especially any form ofsexual harassment. We value asociety where all members are treatedequally and with respect and havebeen disturbed and disheartened toread about the recently highlightedproblems in our field. The NZSA codeof conduct (Link here) states “Membersshould in their professional statisticalpractice have regard to basic humanrights and should avoid any actionsthat adversely affect such rights.”

We have started working with theother statistical organisations inAustralasia - Statistical Society ofAustralia and the regional body ofthe International Biometrics Society- to develop appropriate approachesto this serious issue, which may havejoint elements as well as individualisedstrategies and best future practices foreach society.

Any NZ statistician with immediateconcerns should contact the secretaryor president (with confidentialityassured).Ian Westbrooke, President,iwestbrooke@doc.govt.nzVanessa Cave, Secretary,vanessa.cave@agresearch.co.nz

NZSA support for Greek Statistician

The American Statistical Association is circulatinga statement in support of Andreas Georgiou,the prosecuted former Greek chief statistician,and his colleagues. In December the NZSAexecutive decided to add The New ZealandStatistical Association’s name to the statement.The statement can be read here.

There is an also an individual sign-on form if youwould like to add your individual support. You canfind it here.

If you would like to read more about AndreasGeorgiou, you can find links here.

8

Stories of interest

NZSA Awards 2017

NZSA Campbell Award

The Campbell Award is the Association’s premierwhole-of-career award, aimed at recognising anindividual’s sustained contribution to the promotionand development of statistics. Nominees must excelin at least one of the following areas: statisticalresearch, statistics education, major contributionsto New Zealand through statistical projects, anda sustained record of leadership in, and service to,statistics in New Zealand.

Jennifer BrownUniversity of Canterbury

This year’s recipient has a strong all round caseagainst these criteria. She is a leading researcherin statistical ecology; has led an excellent teachingprogramme in statistics at the University ofCanterbury; and has been a superb servant of theNew Zealand Statistical Association, having servedas President from 2008-2011 and Convenor of theAwards Committee for over ten years prior to that.Indeed, fittingly it was an initiative of hers that ledto the establishment of the Campbell Award.

Worsley Early Career Award

The Worsley Research Award recognizes outstandingrecent published research from a New Zealandstatistician in the early stages of their career. Inparticular, applicants must be within seven years ofconfirmation of their PhD. New Zealand is fortunateto have some excellent young statisticians, so thisyear’s recipient is joining a distinguished group.

Ben StevensonUniversity of Auckland

Modern-day wildlife surveys deploy sophisticatedinstruments to detect individuals, such asmicrophones, high-definition video cameras, anddrones. Ben develops novel statistical methods tounderstand animal populations from the resultingdata, keeping pace with the changing landscape ofecological monitoring.

9

Littlejohn Research Award

The Littlejohn Award is the Association’s premierresearch award, recognizing excellence based onpublications during the five calendar years precedingthe date of the award. The members of the AwardsCommittee were presented with a particularlydifficult choice this year, with multiple excellentnominations.

Matt SchofieldUniversity of Otago

Matt has research interests in Bayesian statistics.His research involves methodological development,Bayesian computation and model assessment. Hiswork is motivated from applications primarily inecology and environmental sciences, includingcapture-recapture experiments, behaviouralecology and dendroclimatology.

Martin Hazelton (Awards Committee Convenor), Matt, Ben, Jennifer, Ian Westbrooke (NZSA President)

10

R Users Groups

by SHIRLEY WU

The R Users Groups reflect the community of Rusers within New Zealand and are about profilingthe breadth of the R statistical programminglanguage, assisting users with tips and techniquesand supporting the increased use of the languagewithin analytical work.

Membership numbers for the Auckland andWellington R Users Groups have been increasingsteadily. As of December 2017, Wellington has 283members and about 30-50 members are regularlyattending our talks. Auckland has 974 membersand has recruited two more volunteers this year tohelp with organising events due to the continuedincrease in membership. The highlight forAuckland this year was having Hadley Wickhampresent to the group on “Expressing yourself withR”. Live streaming of Associate Professor RossIhaka’s talk “Statistical computing in a (more)static environment” (2017 series of the IhakaLectures) was provided to the group in March.Wellington has had an excellent line-up of speakersthis year; recent meetup topics include deeplearning, practical big data issues and R Shiny.The highlight for this year was having Peter Ellis(ex MBIE Manager Sector Trends) talk to the groupabout his work on forecasting the NZ 2017 GeneralElection using R and Stan in August.

We conducted a survey in July this year to helpbetter understand membership profile, preferredmeeting formats and topics of interest. Dealingwith big data in R was the most requested topic,followed closely by R Shiny. Members werealso interested in interactive plots, non-R relateddata analysis work (i.e., topics with a statisticalcomputing lens in general) and integrationbetween R and other tools or databases.

Peter Ellis’ tweet on 6th October about the electionresults and his predictions (link)

Most of the Wellington talks can be found fromour YouTube channel “Wellington R Users Group”.NZSA, Auckland University, MBIE and HarmonicAnalytics have all continued to provide sponsorshipto support our activities. The R users groupswould like to express our sincere gratitude to theseorganisations. The NZSA continuing professionaldevelopment committee and the R Users groupsare planning to join forces to offer introductory Rtraining to the data science community. We willcontinue to work together in the new year to makethis a reality.

11

Canterbury Data Event - Analytics Forum

by RICHARD PENNY

On 13 November the Analytics Forum helda meeting, Analytics and Data Science AcrossSectors, in Christchurch. John Crequer, RichardPenny (StatsNZ) and Ian Westbrooke (NZSAPresident) initiated this meeting as the first of anongoing series of data events in Canterbury. Eightypeople attended, with government departmentsand agencies, universities and private companiesrepresented.

The audience at Canterbury Data Event

Attendees were welcomed by Jennifer Brown(University of Canterbury) who made it clear thatwhatever you wanted to call it (e.g., analytics, datascience, machine learning, statistics) didn’t matter.It was understanding and using data sensibly thatwas the goal. The first speaker was Kevin Ross,General Manager of Precision Driven Health, andfounder and chair of the New Zealand AnalyticsForum. Kevin gave an introduction on the use ofanalytics in the health sector. He was followedby James Williams a Director at Isogonal andLecturer in the Department of Mathematics andStatistics at the University of Canterbury, alsoCo-Director of the Data Science programme atthe university. James also gave some examplesof the use of analytics, but also provided somewarnings that there is more to it than applyingcomputer code to the data at hand. Their talkswere followed by a discussion of the future of dataevents in Christchurch.

The feedback was very enthusiastic and we havemany ideas for data events in 2018. If you wish toknow about future Canterbury Data Events emailrichard.penny@stats.govt.nz.

12

Student & Early Career Update

by LISA HALL

Since becoming the Student & Early Careerrepresentative on the NZSA committee a yearago there have been a few changes includingthe rebranding of the network. Rebranding fromthe Young Statisticians Network to the Student& Early Career Statisticians Network (S&ECS)has made the network more inclusive, especiallyto those who have returned to study later inlife or changed careers. The definition of earlycareer was also extended from 5 to 10 yearsto increase engagement and enable those whohave had a few years in the workforce to sharetheir experiences with students and others whohave joined the workforce more recently. 2017saw some new regional representatives come onboard the team to facilitate event organisation ata regional level throughout the year. I would liketo acknowledge the work done by Devendra Oak(Auckland rep), Amanda Hughes (Wellington rep),Rory Ellis (Canterbury rep) and Timothy Bilton(Otago rep) throughout the year. It has been greathaving more activity in the network with yourinput.

Timothy Bilton and Lisa Hall at the AustralianYSC in September 2017

Timothy Bilton and I had the opportunity to attendthe SSAI Young Statisticians conference which washeld in Coolangatta in September. The conferencewas held at Mantra Twin Towns Resort whichsits on the state border of Queensland and NewSouth Wales. Given the week of conferencecoincided with daylight savings there were lotsof signs informing everyone that the hotel wouldbe running on Queensland time and thus notchanging their clocks forward. The conferenceproved to be a great experience with many qualitypresentations and opportunities for networkingwith our Australian counterparts. We saw someNZ successes which included myself winning thirdplace for best presentation and Rodelyn Jaksonswinning second place for the video presentationcompetition. Thank you to the Campbell BequestFund for providing support to enable us to attendthis conference.

Half of the venue for the YSC conference was inNSW with the other half sitting across the border inQueensland.

13

The ISI Young Statisticians invited session atthe 2017 IASC-NZSA conference. Pictured areHan-Ming Wu (session chair), Jun Tsuchida, LisaHall, Ben Stevenson and Shih-Hao Huang

At the 2017 NZSA conference at AucklandUniversity the Student & Early Career Networkhosted an invited session. This was followedup by a networking event held at The BluestoneRoom with sponsorship from Minitab and Wiley,the publisher of the Australian and New ZealandJournal of Statistics. We were lucky to havetwo guest speakers from Parrot Analytics - a datascientist and a data engineer - who talked usthrough what happens behind the scenes whenpredicting what TV shows will be popular. Theirtalk entitled “From Game of Thrones to GilmoreGirls: How Parrot Analytics Uses Data to Find OutWhat’s Popular Around the Globe” was a greatexample of some of the recent advances in bigdata and advanced analytics. The event was alsoa valuable networking opportunity for those whoattended.

Parrot Analytics’ network of demand showing therelationships between TV shows in the US.

The S&ECS events over the past year have includeda movie night for the Oscar nominated film‘Hidden Figures’, various screenings of the Ihakaseminar series around the country and a selectionof networking events. We are hoping to runa number of similar events in 2018. To stayup to date with the events happening in yourarea, like our Facebook page or follow us onLinkedIn. Please get in touch with your localrep if you have ideas for 2018 events or waysthat the network could better serve our members(http://www.stats.org.nz/youngstatisticians/).

14

News from the Statistics Education Teams

Statistics Education News

by MAXINE PFANNKUCH

Local NewsThe 10th International Research Forum onStatistical Reasoning, Thinking and Literacy

Maxine Pfannkuch, Stephanie Budgett(University of Auckland), and Pip Arnold(Cognition Education Ltd) organised and hostedthe Tenth International Research Forum onStatistical Reasoning, Thinking and Literacy(SRTL-10) in Rotorua from 2 - 8 July. Thesebiennial Research Forums, co-chaired by DaniBen-Zvi (Israel) and Katie Makar (Australia),offer an opportunity for a small, interdisciplinarygroup of researchers from around the world toshare their work, discuss important issues, andinitiate collaborative projects. As a result of thesegatherings, there is now a growing network ofresearchers interested in studying the developmentof students’ statistical literacy, reasoning, andthinking at all age levels. This year’s theme was“Innovations in statistical modelling to connectdata, chance and context” and was the secondtime it has been hosted in New Zealand sincethe Forum’s inception in 1999. Chris Wild(University of Auckland) was the keynote speakerwhile Anna Fergusson (University of Auckland),Stephanie and Maxine gave in-depth presentations.Discussion groups on the papers presented are afeature of these Forums where participants candebate questions such as:

• How can technology help to developstudents’ reasoning about statistical modelsand modelling in the context of connectingdata, chance and context?

• How do students explore, construct or mendmodels at different ages?

• How are ideas related to statistical modelsand modelling understood and used bystudents in connecting data, chance andcontext?

The attendees, from six countries, also enjoyedexploring Rotorua including the Polynesian Spa,Waimangu Valley, Treetops Walk, a Hangi andMaori Concert and a Duck Tour around threelakes. From the Forum 15 papers were submittedat the beginning of December for a Special Issuein the journal ZDM Mathematics Education, theGuest Editors of which are Maxine, Stephanie andDani. We thank NZSA for their support for thisinternational statistics education forum.

SRTL-10 participants

Statistics Teacher’s Day, AucklandThe Department of Statistics, University ofAuckland and the Auckland MathematicsAssociation organized and ran a very successfulStatistics Teacher Day on 28 November 2017with over 280 teachers attending. The day wasvery ably led by the convenors, Anna Fergussonand Marie Fitch. The first plenary speaker wasRhys Jones, originally from Cardiff Universitybut now at University of Auckland, who gave awell-received talk on: “The joy of data analysisand critical thinking - a Welsh perspective”. Thesecond plenary speaker was Chris Wild who, bythe end of his talk: “Oh say, can you see . . . ?”, hadpeople dancing in the aisles.

15

Other regional associations that ran mathematicsand statistics teacher days at the end of 2017were the Bay of Plenty Mathematics Association,Wellington Mathematics Association and the OtagoMathematics Association where Anna Fergussonwas again invited to present three workshops onteaching statistics and probability.

People in statistics education researchCongratulations to Anna Fergusson whograduated with first class honours for Mastersof Professional Studies (Mathematics Education).Her dissertation was titled: “Informally testingthe fit of a probability distribution model.” She isnow enrolled in a PhD in statistics education.Congratulations also to Malia Puloka whograduated MSc with second class honours basedon her thesis titled “Exploring Year 13 students’probabilistic reasoning from an eikosogram.” Sheis currently in the process of enrolling for her PhD.Both of them presented their research at the 2017New Zealand Association of Mathematics TeachersConference in Christchurch in October. Annaalso presented two workshops at the AmericanStatistical Association’s Teachers’ Workshops aspart of the Joint Statistical Meeting in August2017 in Baltimore. Based on her PhD research,Pip Arnold was invited to and attended a meetingin Los Angeles in October about updating thepublication GAISE (Guidelines for Assessmentand Instruction in Statistics Education), which ispublished by the American Statistical Association.Stephanie Budgett presented her statisticseducation research work at the Royal StatisticalSociety International Conference in Glasgow inSeptember. Rhys Jones submitted his PhD thesisin statistics education in December. MaxinePfannkuch will step down from her role as Editorof the Statistics Education Research Journal (ajournal under the auspices of the InternationalAssociation for Statistical Education) in 2018,a position she has held for four years. See:https://iase-web.org/Publications.php?p=SERJ.

CensusAtSchool ProjectThe CensusAtSchool online survey this year hadover 20,600 Year 5-13 NZ students from 418schools taking part. Chris Wild and RachelCunliffe are Co-Directors of the Project and

Atakohu Middleton writes press releases. Mediacoverage has been substantive with 10 articlesappearing in media publications. Rachel wasinterviewed on radio four times and TV three timesabout the findings. Anne Patel is responsiblefor the teaching resources on the website. See:www.censusatschool.org.nz

FutureLearn MOOC - Data to Insight: AnIntroduction to Data AnalysisChris Wild, with the assistance of Mike Forsteragain ran this eight-week course, from October toDecember 2017. The course is centered on ChrisWild’s innovative software iNZight.

Stats Chat Blog (www.statschat.org.nz)Encourage your statistics student to subscribe toStats Chat - my students learn a lot from ThomasLumley’s musings on media statements. StatsChat was launched by the Department of Statistics,University of Auckland in 2011, and is continuingto have a good hit rate (about 220,000 page-viewsper year, the majority of the traffic being from NZ).Thomas Lumley and David Scott, University ofAuckland, are the main contributors.

International NewsElectronic Conference on Teaching Statistics(ECOTS), Data Science for All, 21-25 May 2018.See:https://www.causeweb.org/cause/ecots/ecots18

The Tenth International Conference onTeaching Statistics (ICOTS-10), 8-13 July 2018in Kyoto, Japan. Many New Zealanders havesubmitted papers to this conference and Chris,Pip, and Stephanie are Topic Convenors. See:http://icots.info/10/

World Statistics Congress 2019, 18-23 July inKuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The InternationalAssociation for Statistical Education (IASE) willorganize Invited Paper Sessions for this conference(see http://www.isi2019.org/)

The 11th International Research Forum onStatistical Reasoning, Thinking and Literacywill be held 14-20 July 2019 in Los Angeles, USA.The theme of the Forum is New ways of interactingwith data, context and chance in statisticalmodelling processes (see http://srtl.info).

16

NZSA Education Committee

by MIKE CAMDEN

Is there time for a rest ... ?

We have a fine curriculum, NCEA standards thatassess it, and and plenty of energetic teachers. Isit time we took a rest? It seems not, as we’re in afield full of opportunities:

• the arrival, in the last six months, of DigitalTechnologies | Hangarau Matihiko into thecurriculum, and into NCEA Level 1 for 2018.See the Ministry of Education’s work here,and our input here.

• new aspects of statistical practice that maybecome accessible to school students, asthese things change: data, software, devicesavailable to students, analysis methods, andstatistical thinking needs for future citizensand workers.

• the rise of data science, which couldsynthesize all this.

2017 was the second year of using our strategydocument. It states that overall we want to:

• cooperate and collaborate with keystakeholders

• maintain a high profile across keystakeholders

• maintain our currency in statistical bestpractice and statistics education research

• proactively seek out and assess newopportunities for statistics education.

We have plenty to be proactive about, and we’dwelcome NZSA member feedback and input on anyof it.

Here’s some detail about the opportunities above:

• data science, data harvesting and wrangling,algorithmic thinking and coding

• predictive modelling• geo-coded data and maps• text and image data• reproducible research and workflows using

dynamic documents• the relationship of Statistics with Digital

Technologies.

Committee membership is 28 and growing.

This year we:

• welcomed back Emma Mawby and AnneLawrence

• welcomed new arrivals from overseas RhysJones and Matt Parry. We look forward tothe insights they bring with them into NZ.

We also helped celebrate John Harraway’s moveout of full-time work, contributing (via AlasdairNoble) to the symposium in his honour, and notedhis ongoing active interest in statistical education.The ODT has a nice summary here. A festschrift isin the works.

Thanks, John, for a vast set of contributions tostatistical education, here and overseas. Pleasekeep up your interest.

We had four meetings in the year, with the helpof the Zoom conferencing service. We thankthe University of Otago (and in particular GregTrounson of the Department of Mathematics andStatistics there) for their support with this service.We find it very pleasant and constructive to beable to see and talk with a dozen colleagues overhalf a dozen locations, and to have the minutesappearing miraculously via Anna Fergusson andGoogleDocs.

17

Local News

Statistics at ...

AgResearch Statistics Group

by MARYANN STAINCLIFFE

On a sad note we said goodbye to John Koolaard, avalued friend and colleague, who died in January.A tribute to John is here.

A notable highlight was Timothy Bilton, a PhDstudent jointly with the University of Otago,winning the student talk prize at this year’s MapNetmeeting in Palmerston North. Timothy was alsoa joint winner of the student talk prize at theIASC-ARS/NZSA conference in Auckland.

Esther Meenken attended the PrecisionAgriculture conference held in Hamilton 16-18October. The 550 attendees represented growers,farmers, industry, and university and CRIresearchers. Sessions focussed on the use anduptake of digital technologies in the areas oflivestock farming and crops. 40% of sessionshad a direct focus on data and variability.Although there were many modellers and machinelearning researchers present, panel discussantsidentified a need for greater statistical input.We also had representation at Biometrics by theBorder in November, SEEM in December andIASC-ARS/NZSA in December.

We ended the year with Harold Hendersonbeginning phased retirement. But don’t worryyou will continue to see Harold about as he willcontinue with the team for at least two yearsto help provide support for a new recruit atGrasslands and to allow the rest of the team toadjust to the transition without adding to ourworkloads.

Harold

18

AUT:

Department of Biostatistics andEpidemiology

by PRIYA PARMAR

In the past 6 months, the department’s regularbiostatistical clinics have extended beyond theAkoranga campus. Led by the head of department,Nick Garrett, and in partnership with theFaculty Associate Dean Maori Advancement, theAUTEC Secretariat, Faculty Postgraduate andResearch Office and Centre for Pacific Healthand Development Research our department clinicshave been integrated with research support clinicsbased at AUT’s South campus. These clinicsare designed to support postgraduate studentsand staff who are planning or undertakingresearch. Advice on researching with Maori andPacific, qualitative methods, planning and funding,ethics, biostatistical and epidemiological topicsare available. After spending 2 years with thePopulations Divisions team at the United Nationson extended research leave, Mark Wheldon wasoffered an opportunity to stay with the teamin New York. Mark formally resigned from ourdepartment at the end of 2017. We wish Markwell in his future research efforts. At the end oflast year our health economist, Dr Braden Te Aojoined the University of Auckland’s Public Healthdivision based at the Tamaki campus. We wishBraden well in this new role. Last September RoseSisk and Philip Prah attended and presented atthe Young Statisticians Conference in the GoldCoast, and met with the team at BerghoferQueensland Institute for Medical Research. NickGarrett attended the International Society ofEnvironmental Epidemiology in Sydney.

School of Engineering, Computerand Mathematical Sciences

by KATE LEE

On 23rd and 24th November 2017, theMathematical Science Research Group (MSRG),hosted the 2017 AUT Mathematical SciencesSymposium. This annual event developsand promotes opportunities for AUT academicstaff to collaborate with colleagues from otheruniversities. This year’s symposium focused mainlyon Computational & Mathematical Modelling,Financial Analytics, Statistical Methodology andStochastic Modelling. The Symposium had 7plenary talks and 24 contributed talks and wasattended by 47 participants from a number ofAustralasian institutes and companies.

Prof Jeffrey Hunter has been visiting India to takeup a number of invitations - Keynote Speaker at the2nd International Conference on “Recent Advancesin Mathematical Sciences and its Applications”(RAMSA-2017) held over December 12-14, 2017 atJaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida,New Delhi and, as an Invited speaker at the“International Conference on Linear Algebra and itApplications” (ICLAA-2017) held over Dec 11-15.He also delivered two guest lectures at Vellore onDec 19. Dr. Kate Lee took research leave for thesecond semester in 2017. She visited the Universityof Oxford in UK and Université Paris-Dauphinein France. She gave an invited talk at the2017 International Workshop on Objective BayesMethodology (10-13 December 2017) in Austin,US. We welcomed Dr Nuttanan Wichitaksornto our department from semester 2, 2017.He attended the Sixth Wellington Workshop inProbability and Mathematical Statistics (WWPMS2017), 4-6 December 2017 at Victoria Universityof Wellington.

19

Department of Conservation

by HELENE THYGESEN

The Department of Conservation hired two newstatisticians in 2017: Dong Wang (formerly NIWAand Canterbury) started in January 2018, andHelene Thygesen (formerly various Europeanorganisations) started in July 2017. Other thanthe ongoing work on wildlife monitoring, visitorsurveys and pest control evaluation, we areinvolved in some methodological work on the useof propensity scoring in pest control evaluation(Ian Westbrooke, together with collaborators inMelbourne) and in the analysis of helicopter flights

(Helene Thygesen and Derek Brown, togetherwith Canterbury). In terms of teaching, wecontinue to deliver both 3-day courses and onlinetraining for our own staff as well as for externalparticipants. The subjects are observational studydesign, population dynamics, GLM and datawrangling. The participation has been drying up abit as many DOC staff members have already takenthose courses, so we want to renew the portfoliothis coming year.

Massey University, Palmerston North

by JONATHAN GODFREY

Martin Hazelton has spent a good portion ofthe year as Acting Head of the Institute ofFundamental Sciences. He has (so far) achievedhis primary goal in this role, which is to ensurethat no-one has poisoned themselves or set fireto one of the experimental laboratories. In thefew moments of his time which were not occupiedin such duties, Martin was fortunate enough towin a Marsden grant for 2018-2020 for a projectentitled “Polytope samplers: theory, methods andapplications”.

In June Geoff Jones went to Hanoi for fourdays to continue collaboration with the UN FAOon endemicity of avian influenza. Geoff is amember of a research consortium of Australasianepidemiologists and statisticians, that wasaccepted as an OiE (World Organization for AnimalHealth) Collaborating Centre for Diagnostic TestValidation Science in the Asia-Pacific Region backin February.

Geoff seems to have been doing the conferencerounds late in the year as he attended theRegional Biometrics Conference in Kingscliff, NSW,in November, where he presented a talk onmultivariate binary longitudinal data. In Decemberhe attended the NZSA Conference in Auckland

where he presented a completely different talk onlongitudinal multivariate binary data.

Of greatest note is that as of January 2018, Geoffis now Professor of Biostatistics; he states, “I’mnot sure how that happened” but the rest of us do.Congratulations Geoff.

We had two PhD completions in the secondhalf of 2017: Nadeeka Premarathna and EdgarSantos-Fernandez, and we seem to have missedreporting that of Penny Bilton before that.

Matthieu Vignes visited the I2M lab at MarseillesUniversity (France) from 19th June 2017-20th July2017 on causal RNA networks for the analysis ofRNA-seq data from Progeria patients. His hostswere Prof Pierre Pudlo, Dr Elisabeth Remy andDr Anais Baudot.

The most exciting news of the last few months hasbeen the arrival of Jonathan Marshall’s first child,Samuel Caleb Dittmer Marshall, who arrived inlate November. Mum, Dad and Samuel are doingwell.

Rina Parry and Jonathan Godfrey are graduallysorting out the planning of the 2018 NZSAConference to be held at the Massey Universitycampus in Palmerston North from 27-30 November.We look forward to seeing you there.

20

Plant and Food Research

by DUNCAN HEDDERLEY

Peter Jaksons attended MapNet 2017 in Palmy. Itwas a great, friendly conference with attendeesfrom a variety of backgrounds and organisations.As I write (December 2017), several people (KateRichards, Lindy Guo and Maryam Alavi) are inKingscliff, New South Wales, at the AustralasianBiometrics conference. Lindy has a poster onchanges in kiwifruit during storage. Later inDecember, Kate, Lindy and Mark Wohlers will

be attending the NZSA conference in Auckland.We are hosting a couple of students: JamesDing (studying at Canterbury University, workingwith Peter Jaksons at Lincoln on automating dataanalysis) and Morgan Guillaudeux (studying atAgro-Campus Ouest, Rennes, France, working withLinley Jesson in Hawke’s Bay, creating automatedreporting functions for climate data).

Department of Statistics, The University of Auckland

by MARIE FITCH

When the Nobel Prize for Physics went to threemembers of the team who played a decisive role inthe observation of gravitational waves, AssociateProfessor Renate Meyer had more reason thanmost statisticians to be excited. Read more here.

Associate Professor Rachel Fewster has landeda $680,000 Marsden Grant that promises tosupercharge our biodiversity monitoring toolkit.“In a nutshell, this project is about gettinghigher-value information from routinely collecteddata,” Rachel says. See more here

Renata Rachel

Professor James Curran is working with Americanresearcher Dr Patrick Buzzini of Sam Houston

State University on a project that promises to helppolice identify the origin of fake banknotes throughthe printers and the ink used to make them. Readmore about this project here

As at 1 February, James takes over as HoD fromIlze Ziedins.

James Ilze

New and returning faces

After completing her PhD in the Departmentof Statistics, Claudia Rivera Rodriguez gota post-doctoral role at the hallowed HarvardUniversity in the United States, working withmedical and public health researchers. She hasnow returned to the department as a lecturer. Readmore about Claudia here.

21

In September we welcomed Rhys Jones whojoined the department as a Professional TeachingFellow. Rhys hails from Wales and has a particularpassion for helping students face their fears andto get over “statistics anxiety”. Read more aboutRhys here.

Claudia Rhys

Retirements and changes

Ross Ihaka has officially retired, but a few luckystudents will have him as their lecturer next term.He discusses what’s next here.

Professor Chris Wild has gone part-time as a(lengthy) prelude to retirement. But he’s still

focused on bringing statistics to the masses. Readmore here

Student successes

Andrea Havron and Louise McMillan won beststudent talk, and runner up, awards at the Stats inEcology and Environmental Monitoring conferencein Queenstown. Two of our PhD students, TomElliott and Andrea Havron, received best studenttalk awards at the NZSA conference, and OliverStevenson (younger brother of Ben) was highlycommended.

At the end of 2017, we awarded eight summerscholarships, each worth $6,000 over 10 weeks,to high-achieving students to work on real-world,supervised research projects. Find out about thestudents and their work here.

Other happenings

This year for the first time our annual StatisticsTeachers’ day was held at our city campus. We hadaround 270 teachers who enjoyed great plenariesfrom Rhys Jones and Chris Wild (you just had tobe there!) Shortly after that, we had the foRwardsR workshops for women and Year 12 girls run byDi Cook, Hadley Wickham and Jenny Bryan.

And last but certainly not least: congratulations toYalu Wen, proud mother of baby Albert!

(With thanks to Atakohu Middleton for allowingme to extensively plagiarise the last 3 departmentnewsletters she wrote at the end of 2017! )

22

University of Otago:

Department of Mathematics andStatistics

by AUSTINA CLARK

There was a one day Symposium held inDunedin on September 1 last year to honourJohn Harraway for his contributions to Statisticsover 50 years. There were 30 participantsincluding some of John’s long term friends, HelenMacGillivray from Australia and President of theISI, Len Cook and Bryan Manly.

John Harraway. Photo: Peter McIntosh, Otago DailyTimes

See also the article about the symposium in theOtago Daily times.

Prof Alan Gelfand from Duke University visitedOtago in December/January. He was a keynotespeaker for the SEEM conference in Queenstown inDecember which was organised by the Department.During his visit he presented a two-day workshopfor ecologists and statisticians.

Division of Health Sciences

by CLAIRE CAMERON

Probably the most significant thing that hashappened is that Associate Professor Robin Turnerhas been appointed as the Director of the newlyformed (as of 20th of November) Biostatistics Unit.Robin has come from the University of New SouthWales (most recently) to take up this positionand Dunedin has turned on the sunshine for her.Many of us are feeling optimistic about wherethe new unit will take us. Michel de Lange hasbeen working in the biostatistics group for a fewmonths now on various projects. On the 28th ofNovember, Gabrielle Davie and colleagues hosted“Advancing Health Research at Otago: Usingthe IDI and other linked administrative datasetsSymposium” in the Hunter Centre at the Universityof Otago. Many people attended and it was agreat success. Ari Samaranayaka and BryanManly ran two workshops called “Basic statisticalmethods for health researchers” on the DunedinCampus and Ari attended a workshop at SydneyUniversity on relative risk estimation. Finally,Claire Cameron attended the “Advanced Coursein Epidemiological Analysis” at the London Schoolof Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. That was athoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile experience -and she has an enormous folder to show for it.

23

University of Waikato

by CHAITANYA JOSHI

It has been some time since we have had an updateon what is happening here at Waikato. We haveupdated our course offerings and accordingly ourmajor is now called ‘Data Analytics’ instead of‘Statistics’. In January 2017, Dr Yoonsuh Jungleft Waikato University and went to a position atthe University of Korea. Our Statistics group atWaikato now consists of four staff members.

Bob Durrant has been on sabbatical visitingcollaborators in Europe. He gave several seminarswhile there, including fulfilling a personalambition to talk to the Statistics group at UCL.He also gave a well-received talk at the Te PunahaMatatini retreat in Waitetuna on the difficulty ofachieving privacy in data analysis.

Lyn Hunt was a speaker at an invited session onMixture models at EcoStat2017 in Hong Kong andhas recently returned from Australia where shespent time undertaking research with Prof KayeBasford on mixture models. She also attended theBiometrics by the Border conference in Kingscliff,NSW where she presented a paper.

Chaitanya Joshi presented his work on Bayesianrobustness at two international conferences -GDRR in Madrid and BoB in Australia. He has

been working with NZ Police to model crimeand is now also part of New Zealand Institute ofSecurity and Crime Science (NZISCS) which wasrecently established at the University of Waikato.University of Waikato has now officially becomethe preferred partner of NZ Police and is part ofthe new Evidence Based Policing Centre beingestablished in Wellington.

The university hosted another successful StatisticsScholarship Day in August for senior secondarystudents in the wider Waikato/Bay of Plentyregion intending to take the Scholarship Statisticsexam. The event was organised by the WaikatoMaths Association and convened by Nicola Pettyof the Statistics Learning Centre. Steven Millergave a short talk to the students, and wasinvited to present an extended version of thistalk at the Bay of Plenty Mathematics AssociationMini-conference in Whakatane. Steven alsoattended the 2017 NZSA conference in Auckland,presenting preliminary results from the MarsdenFast-start funded project with which he is involved.

The Department of Mathematics and Statistics islooking forward to welcoming a new tutor and anew Statistics lecturer position to be jointly sharedwith the School of Psychology in 2018.

24