|
1:00 pm Registration (42 attended)
1:30 pm Invited Speaker: Michael Schell
Department of Biostatistics
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
'Identifying Baseball's Best Hitters for Average'
Baseball is a sport filled with numbers ... and arguments. Many of the arguments revolve around who is the best at some aspect of the game. In recent years, statistical methods have played a critical role in these arguments. To receive widespread attention, the arguments must account for changes in the game over time, while at the same time retaining as much statistical simplicity as possible. In my book, Baseball's All-Time Best Hitters, I apply four adjustments to the raw batting average. I adjust for the league batting average, the talent pool of the league, the ballparks that the player plays in and for late career declines. Having thus "leveled the playing field," Tony Gwynn, a current player for the San Diego Padres, not Ty Cobb, who last played in 1928, emerges as baseball's all-time best hitter for average. Arguments are welcome!
2:40 pm Student Paper Competition:
Session 1 (Room 1B27)
- Daniela Nitcheva (USC) - Comparing Estimators For Branching Processes Using Computer Simulations
- Brandon Julio (USC) - Some Inferential Results for Three Inverse Gaussian Type Accelerated Test Models
- Toshinori Okuyama (Clemson) - Bayesian Estimation of Mallard Harvests
- Susan Simmons (USC) - Statistical Modeling and Analyses of a Base-Specific Salmonella Mutagenicity Assay
- Renee Hebert (MUSC) - The Assessment of Robustness of Markov Models to Missing Data in Repeated Measures Studies
- David Hare (USC) - When is it Desirable to Use Stratified Sampling Rather than Simple Random Sampling?
Session 2 (Room 3C01)
- Alexandru Petrisor (USC) - Detecting Spatial Clusters Using the DAC Statistc
- Wei Pan (USC) - Exact One-Sided Confidence Band and the Application in Risk Analysis
- Valerie Durkalski (MUSC) - The Analysis of Mathced-Pair Data Under an Equivalence Study Design
- Megan Meece (USC) - Using the Bootstrap to Estimate the Standard Error of One Hundred-Year Flood Levels When Flood Flows Have Been Adjusted for a Change in the Watershed
- Tiantian Qin (USC) - The Strength Distribution of Minima of Monotone Load-Sharing Parallel Subsystems
4:30 pm Invited Speaker: Richard Scheaffer
President, American Statistical Association
Professor Emeritus, University of Florida
'Statistics for a New Century: Meeting the Needs
of a World of Data'
The world is awash in data. Most people are aware of the importance and power of data in their professional and personal lives, and many attempt to use data in making everyday decisions. But few are educated in ways that would allow them to comprehend more fully the vast array of uses (and misuses) of data and to use more effectively the quantitative information that confronts them daily. Even fewer are aware of the fact that formal study of statistics can serve to strengthen their own academic preparation for a wide variety of careers.
This talk will provide an overview of the current efforts in the United States to infuse statistics into the school (K-12) curriculum and to enhance opportunities for undergraduates to learn more about statistics. Ties to similar efforts in the international community will be mentioned. The goals are to empower students through improved quantitative literacy and to provide strong foundations for careers that depend increasingly on data. Among the strengths of these efforts are the terrific interest they have generated among educators and students at all levels; among the weaknesses are the tendency for programs to become narrow and rote rather than broad and creative. A goal for the next century will be to bring to educational programs in statistics the same kind of creative vitality that marks the practice of statistics among professionals in the field. This will require new emphases in both content and pedagogy.
Statistics education has caught the attention of many; it now must prove itself by making effective use of this opportunity to produce new generations of graduates that will not drown in their world of data.
| 
