South Australia Branch Meetings
Upcoming Meetings
SPECIAL EVENT - Joint meeting with the Australasian Epidemiological Association
Date: Wednesday August 18, 2010
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.
Past meetings
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.
Date: Wednesday July 21, 2010
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?
SPECIAL EVENT - Joint meeting with the Australasian Epidemiological Association
Date: Wednesday June 23, 2010
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