South Australia Branch Meetings
Upcoming Meetings
Stay tuned in the New Year for details of our meeting program for 2012.
Past meetings
E. A. Cornish Memorial Lecture
Date: Wednesday November 16, 2011
Speaker:
Peter Diggle (Lancaster University)
Title:
A Tale of Two Parasites: Model-based Geostatistics and River Blindness in Equatorial Africa
Abstract:
I will begin this lecture with some general remakes on the role of statistics in scientific research, as my own approach to research has been greatly influenced by my time with CSIRO and the culture that Cornish engendered in his time as first chief of the Division of Mathematical Statistics.
For the remainder of the lecture, which I hope will deomonstrate this approach in action, I will give an introduction to model-based geostatistics and describe its contribution to the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control. This multi-national programme aims to control onchocerciasis (river blindness) throughout the affected region of Africa by widespread distribution of a filaricide medication, ivermectin. In areas co-endemic for river blindness and Loa loa (eye-worm), the programme has been interrupted by the occurrence of severe, occasionally fatal, reactions to ivermectin. This has necessitated the mapping of eye-worm prevalence to identify potentially high-risk areas, using (geo) statistical modelling to combine the information provided by spatially sparse prevalence surveys and spatially dense environmental covariates.
Crainiceanu, C. Diggle, P.J. and Rowlingson, B.S. (2008) Bivariate modeling and prediction of spatial variation in Loa loa prevalence in tropical Africa (with Discussion). Journal of the American Statistical Association, 103, 21-47.
Diggle, P.J., Thomson M.C., Christensen, O.F., Rowlingson, B., Obsomer, V., Gardon, J., Wanji, S., Takougang, I., Enyong, P., Kamgno, J., Remme, H., Boussinesq, M. and Molyneux, D.H. (2007). Spatial modelling and prediction of Loa loa risk: decision making under uncertainty. Annals of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, 101, 499-509.
Diggle, P.J. and Chetwynd, A.G. (2011). Statistics and Scientific Method: an Introduction for Students and Researchers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zoure, H., Wanji, S., Noma, M., Amazigo, U., Diggle, P.J., Tekle, A. and Remme, J.H. (2011). The geographic distribution of Loa loa in Africa: results of large-scale implementation of the Rapid Assessment Procedure for Loiasis (RAPLOA). Public Library of Science: Neglected Tropical Diseases (to appear).
Biography:
Peter Diggle is Distinguished University Professor of Statistics in the School of Health and Medicine, Lancaster University, Adjunct Professor in the Deparatment of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health and Adjunct Senior Researcher in the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia University.
Between 1974 and 1983 Peter was a Lecturer, then Reader, in Statistics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Between 1984 and 1988 he was Senior, then Principal, then Chief Research Scientist and Chief of the Division of Mathematics and Statistics and CSIRO, Australia.
Peter's research interests are in the development of statistical methods for spatial and longitudinal data analysis, motivated by applicatios in the biomedical, health and environmental sciences. he has published 10 books and around 180 articles on these topics in the open literature. He was awarded the Royal Statistical Society's Guy Medal in Silver in 1997, is a former editor of the Society's Journal, Series B and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.
Peter was founding co-editor, with his close friend and Johns Hopkins colleague Scott Zeger, of the journal "Biostatistics" between 1999 and 2000. He is a trustee for Biometrika, and has served the UK Medical Research Council as a member of their Population and Systems Medicine Research Board.
Away from work, Peter plays mixed-doubles badminto with his family (partner Amanda, children Jono and Hannah). He is a keen cook, and should play more badminto than he does to counteract the effects of this. He also enjoys music - playing guitar and tenor recorder, and listening to jazz.
Dinner:
Dinner at Jah'z Lounge, 7 Cinema Place, Adelaide will consist of a $40 per head fixed price menu, consisting of an entree of tapas style platters and then a main course selected from a steak dish, a chicken dish and a vegetarian dish. RSVP to Paul Sutcliffe, sutters@bigpond.net.au, by 2 November 2011, and please note that places are limited.
Workshop:
Also during his visit to Adelaide Peter will be presenting a two-day workshop on 'Model-based geostatistics: with applications in the environmental and health sciences', at Flinders University. Please see here for more details and registration.
Joint SSAI SA branch / Australasian Epidemiology Association (AEA) meeting
Date: Wednesday October 19, 2011
Speaker:
John Lynch (University of Adelaide)
Title:
The SANT Data Link Early Childhood Demonstration Project: the experience so far
Biography:
John Lynch is Professor of Public Health at the University of Adelaide since early 2011. He is also Visiting Professor of Epidemiology at University of Bristol (UK). He was previously in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan (USA) and was a Canada Research Chair in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McGill University in Montreal (Canada). In mid 2008 he returned to Australia and took up an appointment at University of South Australia. He is an internationally recognised scholar in epidemiology and public health with more than 200 publications. In 2007 his work in public health was recognised with an honourary Doctorate in Medical Science from the University of Copanhagen. In 2009 he was awarded a prestigious NHMRC Australia Fellowship.
His research interests include early childhood development, life course processes regulating health behaviours and human capability formation, population health information systems, evidence-based public health and improving the public health research-policy nexus.
Current research projects:
- Using linked data to monitor population health and interventions
- Predictive validity of routinely collected perinatal data for child development
- Understanding population trajectories of healthy child development
- Efficacy evaluation of a nurse-lead home visiting program
- Internet-based parental support for infant and child development
- Trajectories of childhood growth and adolescent risk factors in the Aboriginal Birth Cohort
- Cognitive and non-cognitive characteristics, child development, health behaviours and social trajectories of human capability formation
- Evidence for interventions to reduce inequalities in child healthy development
- Role of weaning diet on adolescent cognitive function and physiological risk factors
SSAI Student Talks
Date: Thursday September 22, 2011
Speaker:
Lyron Winderbaum (University of Adelaide)
Title:
Fool's Gold - It'll fool you
Abstract:
I investigate a small data set on trace element concentrations in Pyrite (Fool's Gold) from Moonlight prospect, Pajingo, a mine operated by Conquest Mining (formerly by North Queensland Metals (NQM)) in the Drummond basin, North Queensland. The financial motivation is primarily prediction of gold concentration. Several multivariate methods of explorative analyses are considered, including cluster analysis of the trace elements by the psuedo-metric 1-abs(cor(X1,X2)). The cluster analysis dendrogram is shown to nicely encapsulate the information contained in the pairwise correlations. Information provided by other methods is compared to it. I then demonstrate how, due to the nature of the data, such methods can potentially be extremely misleading, as the correlation coefficients are so strongly affected by outlying values. The effect of outliers is greatly reduced by dealing with the logarithm of the concentrations, but the original clear trends are lost. The well established relationship between Gold and Arsenic in pyrite is a known method for prediction of gold. More complex models are considered and compared for improvement in prediction of Gold concentration.
Speaker:
Aiden Fisher (University of Adelaide)
Title:
The Phase-type distribution - the forgotten distribution?
Abstract:
The phase-type distribution is a versatile, but often overlooked, probability distribution. The continuous univariate form can be used to approximate any continuous distribution with non-negative support, with weak convergence as the number of phases increases. Despite its versatility it is notably absent in more of the statistical literature, and rarely appears outside the reliability context. After a brief discussion on its characterisation and its natural relationship to Markov theory, two practical applications for its use in survival analysis and time-series analysis are given.
Date: Wednesday July 20, 2011
Speaker:
Lisa Yelland is a Senior Statistician at the Australian Research Centre for Health of Women and Babies (ARCH) and at the Data Management and Analysis Centre (DMAC), both at the University of Adelaide.
Title:
Analysis of Perinatal Trials Including Multiple Births: When Should Clustering be Taken Into Account?
Abstract:
Perinatal trials are used to determine the effect of particular treatments or interventions on the health and wellbeing of mothers and their babies. In the simplest case, babies in a perinatal trial will be independent and the data can be analysed using standard statistical methods, such as linear or logistic regression. Clustering occurs when babies from a multiple birth (e.g. twins) are included in the trial. The outcomes of babies from the same birth are likely to be related due to shared genetic and environmental factors. This violates the assumption of independence that is required for standard statistical methods to be valid. Methods which account for clustering are available; however, these are generally only used in settings where all subjects are part of a cluster (e.g. twin studies). Conflicting recommendations have been made regarding if and when clustering should be taken into account in the analysis of perinatal trials including infants from both single and multiple births, particularly when the multiple birth rate is low.
In this talk, I explore some of the factors that influence whether clustering due to multiple births should be taken into account in the analysis of perinatal trials. The DINO Trial, in which preterm infants received either high doses or standard doses of fish oil, is used as an illustrative example throughout. The results of a large simulation study show that standard statistical methods which treat all babies as independent perform poorly in some settings. Other methods which account for the clustering can give more appropriate results. I make recommendations for analysing data from perinatal trials including infants from multiple births.
Biography:
Lisa Yelland is a Senior Statistician at the Australian Research Centre for Health of Women and Babies (ARCH) and at the Data Management and Analysis Centre (DMAC), both at the University of Adelaide. She recently submitted a PhD on statistical methods for analysing randomised controlled trials with a focus on applications to the perinatal trial setting.
Date: Wednesday June 15, 2011
Speaker:
Professor Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Director of Ecological Modelling, The Environment Institute and School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, The University of Adelaide
Title:
Statistical and simulation models estimating extinction time from fossil evidence: climate-driven megafaunal turnover in the Late Pleistocene
Abstract:
The rate at which a once-abundant population declines in density prior to extinction can strongly influence the precision of statistical estimates of extinction time. Here we report the development of a new, robust method of inference which accounts for these potential biases and uncertainties, and test it against known simulated data and dated Pleistocene fossil remains (mammoths, horses and Neanderthals). Our method is a Gaussian-resampled, inverse-weighted McInerny (GRIWM) approach which weights observations inversely according to their temporal distance from the last observation of a species' confirmed ocurrence, and for dates with associated radiometric errors, is able to sample individual dates from an underlying fossilization probability distribution. We show that this leads to less biased estimates of the 'true' extinction date. In general, our method provides a flexible tool for hypothesis testing, including inferring the probability that the extinctions of pairs or groups of species overlap, and for more robustly evaluating the relative likelihood of different extinction drivers such as climate perturbation and human exploitation. We show the application of this approach using genetic data from 25 detailed time series of regional extinctions and invasions across the Northern Hemisphere over the past 60,000 years.
Biography:
Professor Corey Bradshaw currently holds the Professorial Chair of Ecological Modelling at the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute, and he has a co-appointment with the South Australian Research and Development Institute. Previously, he held an Associate Professor position at Charles Darwin University in northern Australia, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tasmania. Corey has completed three tertiary degrees in mathematical ecology (BSc, MSc, PhD) from universities in Canada and New Zealand.
Corey believes that to appreciate the impact of deforestation, pollution, habitat loss, extinctions, over-grazing, over-fishing or warming climates on human wealth, health and well-being, conservation ecologists must analyse information from different ecosystems worldwide to estimate the impact of human activity on all life forms. He specialises in applying mathematical models to large multi-species datasets to determine global-scale patterms of threat to biodiversity. In a world where human activity has precipitated the current Anthropocene extinction event and the subsequent loss of hundreds of thousands of species, his aim is to provide irrefutable evidence to influence government policy and private behaviour for the preservation of functioning ecosystems.
Corey has published over 150 peer-reviewed scientific articles, 8 book chapters and a book. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of South Australia and was awarded the 2010 Australian Ecology Research Award, the 2010 Scopus Young Researcher of the Year, the 2009 HG Andrewartha Medal, and a 2008 Young Tall Poppy Science Award. He is also editor of two international scientific journals and is regularly featured in Australian and international media for his research.
Date: Wednesday May 18, 2011
Speaker:
Dr Julian Taylor, CSIRO
Title:
Variable Selection in Linear Mixed Models with application to QTL analysis
Abstract:
One common focus in modern plant breeding experiments is the analysis of Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL). Unfortunately these experiments are often complex requiring non-genetic sources of variation to be captured such as structured spatial correlations between observations and/or variation arising from other experimental design components. This talk will discuss the theory and application of whole genome QTL analyses using a variable selection method integrated into current mixed model theory. The integration is achieved through an extension and reparameterisation of a well known class of penalties. To ensure efficiency the Mixed Model Variable Selection (MMVS) method uses the flexible software package ASReml-R (Butler, et al. 2009) as its core linear mixed model fitting routine. A general simulation study reveals the extended class of penalities achieves varying degress of estimator shrinkage depending on one of its parameters. The simulations also reveal a link between the number of false positives and the number of true coefficients using the same penalty. The MMVS method is then applied to a wheat quality data set from the Food Futures Flagship, CSIRO where the focus is the analysis and interpretation of QTL.
Biography:
Julian Taylor is a postdoctoral fellow at the Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics division of CSIRO where he is affiliated with the Food Futures National Research Flagship. He currently collaborates on projects with Plant Industry including the analysis of QTL for wheat quality with advanced intercrosses.
Date: Wednesday April 20, 2011
Speaker:
Caroline Deans, Assistant Director, South Australian Census Management Unit, Australian Bureau of Statistics
Title:
2011 Census: 111 days to go
Abstract:
The Australian Census of Population and Housing will be conducted on 9 August 2011. The Census is often described as Australia's largest peace time operation, costing $440 million over its five year cycle and employing 43,000 people. It is run like a military operation with clean lines of command, well defined procedures to ensure consistency and a massive logistical exercise to transport 1,400 tons of Census material around the country.
The presentation will discuss:
- Why Australia takes a Census? Who uses the data and what is it used for?
- How is the Census conducted? Including the enumeration methodology, post enumeration survey and processing of data.
- Strategies to reduce undercoverage in hard to reach population groups
Biography:
Caroline Deans is an Assistant Director at the ABS responsible for the South Australian Census Management Unit. Caroline has been involved in the Census program for 18 months, successfully managing the 2010 Dress Rehearsal and now overseeing a team of 25 to conduct the 2011 Census in South Australia. Caroline joined the ABS five years ago after a career in the private sector, including stints at the RAA and ETSA. She has a Masters of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Management (International Marketing). Caroline has lived in Adelaide for most of her life and is getting to know country South Australia better as she travels the state recruiting staff and engaging with local stakeholders.
Date: Wednesday March 23, 2011
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
2010 AGM Minutes
2010 Annual Report
Speaker:
Dr Chris Brien
University of South Australia
Title:
Principles in the design of multiphase experiments with a later laboratory phase: orthogonal designs
Abstract:
It is common for the material produced from field and other experiments to be processed in a laboratory. Reasons for this include the need to measure chemical and physical attributes using equipment such as spectrometers, gas chromatographs, pH meters or wear and strength testers, or to produce processed products such as wine, bread and malt that are subsequently assessed, often by an expert panel. These experiments are multiphase. They occur widely in agriculture, food processing and pharmaceutical industries and biological and environmental sciences, although their multiphase nature is often not recognised.
A systematic approach to designing the laboratory phase of such multiphase experiments, taking into account previous phases, will be described. We extend the fundamental principles fo experimental design - randomization, replication and blocking - to provide general principles for designing multiphase experiments that employ orthogonal designs. In particular, the need to randomize the material produced from the first phase in the laboratory phase is emphasized. Factor-allocation diagrams are employed to depict the randomizations in a design and skeleton analysis-of-variance (ANOVA) tables to evaluate their properties. The techniques are applied to several scenarios for an athlete training experiment.
Biography:
Dr Chris Brien is currently an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Phenomics and Bioinformatics Research Centre at the University of South Australia. Chris, while principally a Biometrician, has taught and consulted in many application areas of statistics. His research interest is in the design and analysis of experiments. In particular he has been a pioneer in the design and analysis of multiphase and other multitiered experiments. Another area of interest has been the formulation of mixed models for experiments, including for longitudinal experiments. Has has been a GenStat user since 1971 and these days also uses ASReml-R.
Date: Thursday February 17, 2011
Speaker:
Liliana Orellana
Chair, Institute of Calculus, University of Buenos Aires
Title:
Estimating the optimal dynamic treatment regime from longitudinal observational data
Abstract:
Dynamic treatment regimes are individually tailored treatments based on patient covariate history. Optimal dynamic regimes (ODR) are rules that will lead to the highest expected value of some utility function at the end of a time period. Many pressing public health questions are concerned with finding the ODR out of a small set of rules in which the decision maker can only use a subset of the observed covariates. For example, one pressing question in AIDS research is to define the optimal threshold CD4 cell count at which to start prescribing HAART to HIV infected subjects, a rule which only depends on the covariate history through the minimum CD4 count.
In the last decade there have been important advances in the development of methodology adequate to estimate optimal treatment strategies from observational longitudinal cohorts. In this talk I will present one approach to estimate the ODR when the set of enforceable regimes comprises simple rules based on a subset of past information which can be indexed by a Euclidean vector x. In will describe how to conduct inference, using an inverse probability weighting approach, under models that allow the possibility of borrowing information across regimes and across baseline covariates. Finally I will point out some of the practical issues that remain unresolved for the specific problem of estimating the optimal CD4 cut-off point at which to start HAART therapy.
This is joint work with Andrea Rotnitzky and Jamie Robins.
Biography:
Liliana Orellana is chair of the Institute of Calculus at the University of Buenos Aires. The Institute is a research centre focusing on Statistics and Applied Mathematics. Liliana is the leader of the Graduate Diploma in Statistics for Health Sciences (University of Buenos Aires), a two year graduate program intended for healthcare professionals with a strong emphasis on applied statistics. She is also an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sciences where she lectures statistics courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Her current research focuses on methods for drawing causal inferences from longitudinal studies. Liliana has contributed with original methodology for estimating the optimal treatment regime from longitudinal data collected in an observational study. The approach was aimed at elucidating the optimal time to start antiretroviral therapy in HIV infected persons.
Date: Tuesday November 9, 2010
Speaker:
Prof R. A. Bailey
Professor of Statistics, Mathematical Sciences Institute, Queen Mary University of London
Title:
Conflicts between optimality criteria for block designs with low replication
Abstract:
The quality of incomplete-block designs is commonly assessed by the A-, D-, and E-optimality criteria. If there exists a balanced incomplete-block design for the given parameters, then it is optimal on all these criteria. It is therefore natural to use the proxy criteria of (almost) equal replication and (almost) equal concurrences when choosing a block design.
However, work over the last decade for block size 2 has shown that when the number of blocks is near the lower limit for estimability of all treatment contrasts then the D-criterion favours very different designs from the A- and E-criteria. In fact, the A- and E-optimal designs are far from equi-replicate and are amongst the worst on the D-criterion.
I shall report on current work which extends these results to all block sizes. Thus the problem is not blocks of size 2; it is low replication.
Biography:
Rosemary A. Bailey is a British statistician who is renowned for her work in the design of experiments and the analysis of variance and in related areas of combinatorial design, especially in association schemes. She has written books on the design of experiments, on association schemes, and on linear models in statistics. She is a professor of statistics at the Mathematical Sciences Institute, Queen Mary University of London, England.
Date: Wednesday October 20, 2010
Speaker:
Charles Pearce
Thomas Elder Chair of Mathematics, The University of Adelaide
Title:
Statistics and New Zealand
Abstract:
Prehistory commonly proceeds in terms of scenarios proposed by historians. These scenarios often change dramatically in the light of new discoveries. Genetics in particular has had an important role in the last decade in bringing about such change. This talk gives an example of the power of statistics to overturn prevailing historical paradigms.
Recently there has been a growing acceptance of a late (12th century AD) first settlement date for New Zealand by Polynesians. This is sometimes advanced to AD 1280. For a modest initial number of settlers, a very rapid and sustained population growth is then required to produce the population extant around AD 1800. We indicate how statistics coupled with palaeodemography establishes that this paradigm, although currently dominant, is untenable, and that the evidence requires a much longer time frame for New Zealand prehistory.
Reference: "Oceanic Migration", Charles and Frances Pearce. Published by Springer 2010.
Biography:
Charles Pearce was born in New Zealand. After completing degrees in mathematics and physics at Wellington, he obtained a Ph.D. in the Department of Mathematical Statistics at the ANU. His research interests centre on probabilistic and statistical modelling and analysis and optimization, in which he has over 300 publications. He was awarded the ANZIAM Medal in 2001 and the Potts Medal in 2007 for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics and operations research. He holds the Thomas Elder Chair of Mathematics at The University of Adelaide.
Date: Wednesday September 15, 2010
Speaker:
Tony Meissner
Principal Scientist - Monitoring, Resources Monitoring Team, Division of Science, Monitoring and Information, Department for Water at Berri, South Australia
Title:
Statistical Models of Impact of Woolpunda Salt Interception Scheme on the River Murray
Abstract:
The River Murray as it flows through South Australia acts as a drain for the highly saline regional groundwater that contributes to salinity in the river. The largest input of salt, approximately 250 t/d, occurs between Lock 3 and Holder downstream. Forty nine bores, above the river valley, were drilled to the underlying groundwater from 1989 to 1992. Pumping of saline ground-water commenced in 1990 to lower the groundwater gradient to the river thus preventing salty water entering the river. The Woolpunda Salt Interception Scheme became fully operational in June 1996. A hydrogeological review of the scheme was carried out in August 2000 (Telfer and Way, 2000) that concluded the impact of the scheme for flows less than 10,000 Ml/d was -46.3 EC units at Morgan, SA.
Daily readings of salinity (EC) and flow are taken at Overland Corner 14 km downstream from Lock 3 and salinity at Holder, 26 km downstream from Overland Corner. Weekly average readings were calculated from the daily values from April 20 1992 until Dec 31 1999. A factor (phase) was derived from the drawdown period from April 1992 to June 1996 and the operating period from July 1996 to December 1999. Three statistical linear mixed effects models were examined: (1) the EC value at Holder was regressed against the EC and flow at Overland Corner and phase (2) The difference in EC value between Holder and Overland Corner regressed against flow and phase, and (3) the two sites were converted to factors (sites) and EC regressed against flow, phase and sites. At flows of 5,000 Ml/d the impact of the SIS was estimated, for the three models, to be 30:2 +/- 10:1, 34:6 +/- 3:4, and 32:4 +/- 2:3 EC units respectively.
Biography:
Tony Meissner currently works as Principal Scientist - Monitoring in the Resources Monitoring Team, Division of Science, Monitoring and Information, Department for Water at Berri, South Australia. He has had over 40 years experiences in agricultural and water resources research and management. In 2005 he spent a year with the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, Canberra contributing to salinity policy. On his return, he managed the Berri Hydrometric Unit who undertake flow and salinity monitoring of the River Murray. In the past 18 months Tony has contributed to the analysis of hydrological data particularly along the River Murray in South Australia.
Date: Wednesday August 18, 2010
SPECIAL EVENT - Joint meeting with the Australasian Epidemiological Association
Speakers:
Dr Emily Steele (Research Fellow) & Dr Lynne Giles (Senior Research Fellow)
Life Course and Intergenerational Health Research Group, Robinson Institute, The University of Adelaide
Title:
The influence of precarious employment on age at first childbirth: some epidemiological and statistical considerations
Abstract:
The mean age at which women in Australia have their first child increased in recent decards to reach 28.2 years by the year 2006. Since maternal age is a strong risk factor for infertility, pregnancy complications and neonatal problems, it is imperative to investigate barriers to women having children when they (and their partners) would like to. We aimed to assess women's (and their partners') experiences of precarious employment as a factor in older age of first childbirth. We concomitantly considered women's educational attainment, and the influence of other contemporary sources of financial insecurity, such as having a higher education debt.
We conducted a cross-sectional retrospective study based on a birth cohort of young women (n ~ 1000, born 1973-75). A detailed event history instrument was developed to obtain data regarding a range of life domains over a 20 year life course period, including pregnancy, partnering, education, and employment histories. Much of the data was collected at the the month-level of detail. Time-varying and time-constant survival analysis techniques were applied within a life course framework to examine the effects of precarious employment on age at first childbirth (takingi nto account educational attainment and other influential factors), with a sub-set of the study cohort (n=230). This presentation will address key challenges we experienced in designing the analytical framework.
Biography:
Emily Steele is a Research Fellow in the Life Course and Intergenerational Health Research Group in the Robinson Institute at The University of Adelaide. She recently finished her PhD, which focused on the influence of life course structural determinants of older first childbirth and included the design of complex epidemiological survey instruments, and data collection (and analysis) from a population-based cohort (n ~ 1000). Emily is a physiotherapist and also completed a Master of Public Health prior to her PhD.
Lynne Giles is a Senior Research Fellow in the Life Course and Intergenerational Health Research Group in the Robinson Institute at The University of Adelaide. Her interests include social epidemiology and the analysis of longitudinal data. After gaining her undergraduate qualifications in Mathematical Statistics, Lynne completed a Master of Public Health and PhD in Applied Statistics.
Date: Wednesday July 21, 2010
OPEN FORUM - The South Australian Branch of the Statistical Society in conjunction with the Mathematicians in Schools program invite you to an open forum to hear about and discuss ways to encourage more students to study mathematics and ways of improving the teaching of mathematics and statistics in Australian schools and universities.
Speaker:
Dr Rebecca Anderson
SA Project Officer, Mathematicians in Schools, CSIRO Education
Title:
Mathematics in Schools Program
Abstract:
Mathematicians in Schools aims to create and support long-term professional partnerships between mathematicians and teachers. Its purpose is to promote a deeper understanding of the importance of mathematics in our society for students and teachers, and through them, the wider community. Mathematicians in Schools in an Australian Government initiative that is managed by CSIRO Education.
Open forum:
Paul Sutcliffe (SA Branch President) will chair an open forum aimed at identifiying ways to improve the number of students studying higher level mathematics. How can we encourage those students studying mathematics at University to consider statistics as an option?
Date: Wednesday June 23, 2010
SPECIAL EVENT - Joint meeting with the Australasian Epidemiological Association
Speaker:
Dr Nicole Pratt
Senior Research Fellow, Sansom Institute, University of South Australia
Title:
Using an Australian administrative data set for post-marketing surveillance of antipsychotics in elderly veterans: The challenge of unmeasured confounding
Abstract:
Computerised administrative claims databases provide a convenient and valuable source of information to study the effects of medicine use, however, observational studies utilizing these data are often criticized due to the potential lack of control for unmeasured confounding. The extent to which traditional pharmacoepidemiological studies utilising administrative claims databases can deal with confounding is limited as these data sources often lack information on many potentially important confounders, such as clinical information, life style factors and disease severity.
In this talk, I will introduce some new approaches to help overcome possible bias in observational studies due to unmeasured confounding, including: instrumental variable analysis, the self-controlled case-series design, prescription sequence symmetry analysis and propensity scores. I will then illustrate how these approaches apply to the assessment of the adverse effects of antipsychotic medication prescribing in the elderly.
Biography:
Nicole is a senior research fellow in the Quality Use of Medicines and Pharmacy Research Centre, Sansom Institute, University of South Australia. Nicole has recently completed her PhD entitled 'Medication prescribing in the elderly and the effect on health related outcomes: An investigation of bias in observational studies using computerised claims databases'. The aim of this thesis was to determine how information contained in computerised administrative claims databases can be used effectively to study the outcomes of medicine use. This work focused on the techniques and methods that are currently available to pharmacoepidemiologists to overcome unmeasured confounding. Nicole has worked previously as a biostatistician with the Data Management and Analysis Centre, in the Discipline of Public Health, University of Adelaide.
Date: Wednesday April 28, 2010
Speaker:
Dr Jessica Kasza
University of Copenhagen
Title:
The Estimation of Bayesian Networks in the Presence of Exogenous Variables
Abstract:
The estimation of Bayesian networks given high-dimensional data sets, with more variables that there are observations, has been the focus of much recent research. While there are many methods available for the estimation of such structures, these methods typically assume independent and identically distributed samples. However, often the data available will have a more complex mean structure and additional components of variance. For example, in the estimation of a Bayesian network from gene expression data, the data set may contain exogenous variables thought to affect the expression levels of the genes of interest.
In this talk, I will be considering the case where the effect of such exogenous variables is not of primary interest, but secondary to the estimation of a Bayesian network given the data. After a brief review of Bayesian networks and the estimation thereof given high-dimensional data, I will discuss how exogenous variables may be incorporated into the model and why the incorporation of such variables in necessary.
Biography:
Dr Jessica Kasza is currently a postdoc in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen. She recently received her PhD from the University of Adelaide for a thesis entitled "Bayesian Networks for High-dimensional Data with Complex Mean Structure". Her research interests focus on the theory of Bayesian networks and graphical models and the use of these structures in the modelling of genetic regulatory networks.
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Date: Wednesday March 17, 2010
Details of AGM Elections and Agenda
Speaker:
Mr Paul Sutcliffe
Australian Bureau of Statistics
Title:
Australian Statistical Conference, Adelaide, July 2012
Abstract:
The fifteenth Australian Statistical Conference was last held in Adelaide in July 2000 at the Hilton. It is now official that the SA Branch of the Statistical Society will organise the conference in 2012 and I am sure that we will be able to deliver a great conference. In this presentation I will talk about the general themes that have emerged from reviewing evaluation reports and speaking to past organisers. In starting the planning process I have been assisted by Stuart McLeod from the Adelaide Convention Tourism Authority who has been invaluable in putting together suitable venue options. We have chosen July as the most suitable month to hold the conference and I will present three conference models for consideration of members.
SPECIAL EVENT - Student forum
Date: Wednesday November 25, 2009
Speaker:
Mr Nicholas Wilkey
PhD student, School of Politics, The University of Adelaide
Title:
Suicide attacks in Af-Pak
Abstract:
Suicide attacks are a huge ongoing threat in Afganistan and Pakistan. However surprisingly little research has been conducted which specifically examines this threat, as opposed to the considerable amount of work which deals with other aspects of the Afghan and Pakistani conflicts. My thesis research therefore examines the applicability of the major existing theories of suicide terrorism to the cases of Afghanistan and Pakistan in order to redress this situation. My talk will be drawn from research I am conducting for a chapter which deals with organizational theories of suicide terrorism. These theories attempt to explain the phenomenon in terms of the strategic and tactical benefits that suicide attacks provide those groups who employ them. I will present a brief histoty of suicide attacks and of the Afghan and Pakistani conflicts and then turn to an outline of the main theories relevant to this research. Finally, I will give an overview of the available relevant data and I will describe how I have been attempting to use it to test the competing theories.
SPECIAL EVENT - E. A. Cornish Memorial Lecture
Date: Wednesday October 28, 2009
Speaker:
Dr Louise Ryan
Cheif, CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics
Title:
Data, data everywhere!
Abstract:
We live in data-rich times. Advances in information technology now allows us routine access to massive amounts of data through a variety of sources and relating to almost every aspect of daily life. This presentation will focus on the importance of modern statistical analysis and visualization tools to help process and turn these massive datasets into usable information, leading to new insights and, ideally, policy changes. Two examples will illustrate how routinely collected emergency room data can be used to inform decision makers about emerging diseases such as swine flu as well as understand socio-economic impact on heart disease.
Biography:
Dr Louise Ryan is well known for her contributions to statistical methods for cancer and environmental health research. At CSIRO, she is currently leading a group of 150 people in mathematical and statistical research areas as diverse as financial risk, climate change and cell biology. This research is allowing CSIRO to better address national challenges.
Dr Louise Ryan attained a Bachelor of Arts in statistics and mathematics from Macquarie University Sydney, and a Doctorate of Philosophy in statistics from Harvard University, USA. Louise grew up in Australia but has spent almost thirty years in the USA, where she most recently held the post of Henry Pickering Walcott Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard University. She joined CSIRO in 2009.
Over Louise's career she has been recognised with a number of professional awards and achievements including: Fellow of the American Statistical Association; the Spiegelman Award, conferred by the American Public Health Association; and the Distinguished Achievement Award of the Environmetrics Section of the American Statistical Association. Louise has also served as editor or associate editor for a number of statistical journals and President of the Eastern North American Region of International Biometric Society.
Other significant contributions Louise has made as a mentor to women and minority students have led to several awards which include the annual Mentors Award from Harvard School of Public Health and a Role Models award from Minority, Inc. Louise has been a passionate advocate for diversity in higher education and was the founding director of a program for the training of minority students at Harvard.
SPECIAL EVENT - Joint meeting with the Australasian Epidemiological Association
Date: Wednesday September 16, 2009
Speaker:
Associate Professor Peter Baghurst
Women's and Children's Hospital and The University of Adelaide
Title:
Current issues in the monitoring of outcomes of care in Australian hospitals
Abstract:
The safety, quality and appropriateness of healthcare in Australia is now firmly on the political agenda, with Federal Health Ministers of both the former Liberal Government and the current Labour Government calling for greater accountability of hospitals through the public disclosure of key performance indicators. A major difficulty, however, is the dearth of relevant information required to generate meaningful comparisons - and a very weak understanding of issues like bias, confounding and hospital size, which makes the interpretation of 'league' tables difficult, - and very prone to mischief.
Death in hospital (or in the 30 days post discharge) is a very basic measure of the quality of healthcare - but the information on which to base adjustments for the many factors which impact on the risk of death is very limited. Graphical techniques such as funnel plots are useful for identifying hospitals whose performance deserves closer scrutiny either as opportunities for improvement - or as role models, but smaller hospitals often appear as the better performers, emphasising the need for more detailed information about risk factors. An application of risk-adjusted funnel plots to the obstetric outcome 'Intact Lower Genital Tract' will be used to demonstrate some of the difficulties of comparing hospital performances in a manner which will actually engage the clinicians.
Queensland, post Jayant Patel, leads the country in terms of applying statistical process control techniques to a wide variety of hospital outcomes - but the way in which alarm thresholds and Average Run Lengths are manipulated in order to force closer scrutiny of practice generates considerable workloads - often in response to false alarms. An example of how these methods might be used to influence obstetric practice will be provided.
Biography:
Peter Baghurst is Head of the Public Health Research Unit, Children Youth and Women's Health Service, Women's and Children's Hosptial - and Associate Professor in the Disciplines of Paediatrics and Public Health in the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Adelaide.
Date: Wednesday July 22, 2009
Speaker:
Mr Michael Leonard
The University of Adelaide
Title:
Gaussian Random Fields for Space-Time Rainfall Modelling
Abstract:
The hydrologic response of urban catchments is sensitive to small scale space-time rainfall variations. A stochastic rainfall model used for design purposes must reproduce important statistics at these small scales. However, current models make simplifying assumptions about the way rain fields evolve and thus cannot be expected to reproduce important statistics over various space and time scales. In this talk, a new phenomenological heirarchical stochastic model is developed to robustly simulate rainfall fields consistent with 10-minute 1-km length pixel radar images. The heirarchical framework has three levels. The first level simulates a latent Gaussian random field conditioned on the previous time step, which is transformed to a rain field using a power transformation. A Toeplitz block ciculant technique is used to achieve fast and accurate simulations of large Gaussian random fields. In the second level, First-order autoregressive models are used to describe the within-storm variations of the level-one parameters that control the evolution of rain fields. The third level is designed for simulation of storm sequences, where the parameters of the level-two model are classified into different sets according to different storm types. Calibration is performed using a generalized method-of-moments approach. It is demonstrated that this two-level rainfall model produces realistic sequences of rain images which capture the physical hierarchical structure of clusters, patchiness of rain fields and the persistence exhibiting during storm development. Furthermore, a variety of important statistics are adequately reproduced at both 10-min and 1-hr time scales over space scales ranging from 1 km up to 32 km. Finally, application of this model to short-term rainfall forecasting in presented.
Biography:
Michael Leonard completed his studies in Civil Engineering at The University of Adelaide in 2002. His PhD in hydrology stems from the need for stochastic models to assess the risks associated with flooding for engineering design. His interests are in spatiotemporal modelling, random fields and point processes and computer programming. As an example of the latter Michael has recently developed a library to allow graphic and packages in R to be accessed from a Fortran program (www.rfortran.org) and is currently teaching programming to Engineering students.
Date: Wednesday June 17, 2009
Speaker:
Dr Alun Pope
Rismark International
Title:
Statistical models for valuing residential properties on a large scale
Abstract:
Traditional methods for valuing residential property are expensive and the valuations they provide rapidly become out of date. Statistical models are much cheaper (once built) and can produce timely valuations for both individual properties and large portfolios. These models can be used for several purposes, including:
- assisting in the lending decision;
- regular valuation of portfolios of mortgage-backed securities;
- construction of small area price indices; and
- construction of a tradable daily price index.
This talk will cover statistical aspects of the design and implementation of models on an Australia-wide scale, with illustrations from the construction of the Rismark Automated Valuation Model, which is based on a combination of hedonic models.
Biography:
Alun works for Rismark International, a Sydney-based company which carries out research and manages funds, specialising in residential real estate. Before that, he worked for St. George Bank and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. He was for many years an academic (University of Newcastle, UNSW), where his research interests included theoretical aspects of nonparametric regression and time series as well a applied work on problems relating to the assessment of risk on firing ranges. He was worked fro the ABS and the Department of Defence, and has been a partner in a small consulting company. His PhD was in pure mathematics at the University of London, but on returning to Australia immediately after that, he discovered the joy of statistics. He is an AStat and has been president of the NSW Branch of the SSAI.
Date: Wednesday May 20, 2009
Speaker:
Dr Helena Oakey
Senior Statistician
Discipline of Obstetrics and Gynaecology
School of Paediatrics and Reproductive Health
The University of Adelaide
Title:
Field trials, pedigrees and statistics: getting the mix right
Abstract:
This talk will give an overview of genetic variety testing from the breeders' and statisticians' points of view. The current designs used and approach to analysis of multi-environment trials will be discussed. The benefits of extending the analysis to include pedigree information will be presented. A practical example illustrating the methods will be shown.
Biography:
Helena Oakey worked as a statistical consultant for the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Wine (University of Adelaide) for six years before starting her PhD. Her PhD thesis looked at incorporating pedigree information into the analysis of agricultural genetic trials. She is currently working at ARCH (Australian Research Centre for Health of Women and Babies) overseeing the design and analysis of the clinical trials conducted by research staff.
2009 Annual General Meeting
The Annual General Meeting of the SA Branch was held on 18 March 2009 at which the 2008 Annual Report and Treasurer's Report were presented and elections for branch council positions were held. The associated minutes and reports are available below.
SSAI SA Branch AGM Minutes 2009
SSAI SA Branch AGM Minutes 2008
SSAI SA Branch Financial Report 2008