Newsgroups: bit.listserv.edstat-l
Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 11:44:48 EST
Reply-To:     Walt Pirie <WLTPIRIE@VTVM1.BITNET>
From:         Walt Pirie <WLTPIRIE@VTVM1.BITNET>
Subject:      Expository sessions

I agree with everything in the note below, except one basic issue:
I don't feel that is an adequate answer to the original point by
Meredith.
John's suggestions are not a total or adequate substitute for
a national pro-active, all inclusive organization. My own
observations over the years is that the ASA has been less active
and more resistant to that than any other professional discipline-
specific I'm familiar with (except perhaps the physicists, not exactly
terrible company I suppose). Admittedly over the past several years
there has been a lot more activity on a non-Ph.D. research level than
in the past, but it has been mostly by individuals or small groups
without whole-hearted, effective participation or support from ASA
central. I hope that continues to improve. If for no other reason
than that, I am pleased to see the current activity regarding
certification. I hope it too does not fall prey to the general apathy
within the discipline and the alarmists with vested interests that
fear any change in the status quo.



The latest Amstat News contains a letter from Meredith Warshaw pointing out
that the ASA does relatively little for masters level statisticians (to some
extent, the same is true about Ph.D. applied statisticians).  I wish to point
out to others on this list that there is something that they can do about
this: organize sessions at ASA meetings.

ANYONE can organize a "special contributed paper" session at an ASA meeting
(in the past, these were called "topic contributed" sessions).  The format is
4 or 5 20 minute talks (4 if there is a discussant); see the registration
from in the November Amstat News.  The organizer needs to submit all the
abstracts as a package by 1 February, and all speakers must pay a
registration fee at that time (just as for a contributed abstract).  In
contrast to an "invited" session, you do not need to submit a proposal in
advance, and no approval by the program committee is required.

The problem Meredith refers to in her letter was brought home to me at the
ASA meeting in Boston when, on Wednesday evening, I heard someone ask a very
experienced masters statistician, "Have you heard anything interesting?"  She
responded, "There was finally a session this afternoon that had some
interesting talks."  It struck me that what she said was true: there are very
few expository sessions on general methodology (in contrast to some of the
sections which organize nice expository sessions on some topics, such as
clinical trials).  Tom Louis, president of ENAR, was among those who agreed
that there should be more expository sessions.

I have already organized a special contributed paper session on the bootstrap
for the 1993 ASA meetings.  My procedure was simple: I sent an e-mail to Brad
Efron, asking for suggested speakers, and he replied very promptly (the IMS
e-mail address list on statlib is helpful here).  Most of the people I
contacted agreed to speak.  Colleagues are working on organizing other
sessions on robust smoothing and on meta-analysis.

Anyone can do what I have done.  All it takes is about a working day's time
to contact people.  A session presenting applications of a particular method
or interesting applications in a subject matter area would also be
interesting.  Another possibility is to organize a roundtable discussion
(November Amstat News, p. 10).  If you don't like the current format of ASA
meetings, use the system!  It's there!

John M. Karon
Centers for Disease Control
jmk2@cidhiv1.em.cdc.gov
voice (404) 639-2032

|==================================|============================|
|  Walter R. Pirie                 |                            |
|  Department of Statistics        |                            |
|  Virginia Tech                   |                            |
|  Blacksburg, VA 24061-0439       |                            |
|                                  |                            |
|  Tel. 703-231-5441               |                            |
|  Bitnet WLTPIRIE@VTFVM1          |                            |
|  Telnet WLTPIRIE@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU |                            |
|                                  |                            |
|  Fax  703-231-3863               |                            |
|==================================|============================|
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU