The Victorian Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia Inc. (SSAI) is an umbrella group for all statisticians practising in Victoria, and for all non-statisticians with an interest in the field of statistics.
Meetings will be held at The University of Melbourne unless otherwise indicated. 

SSAVIC Listserver

A list of members of the Victorian Branch of SSAI has been created on a server at the University of Melbourne. List members can post messages which will be received by all on the list. So, if you need to advertise seminars, workshops, job vacancies, etc., that are relevant to the society's interests, you are welcome to post to the list. The list address is ssavic@puffer.ms.unimelb.edu.au

If you are not a SSAI member and wish to add your name to the list, contact Sue Finch, s.finch@ms.unimelb.edu.au

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Upcoming events

Victorian Branch Meeting - Tuesday 27th July, 2010

Data prediction competitions: far more than just a bit of fun

Anthony Goldbloom
Founder of Kaggle.com

Kaggle is a global platform for data prediction competitions allowing researchers and companies to post their problem and have it scrutinised by the world's statisticians and computer scientists.
By exposing a problem to a wide range of analysts and techniques, data prediction competitions turn out to be great way to get the most out of a dataset, given its inherent noise and richness. For example, Kaggle has been running a bioinformatics competition requiring participants to pick markers in HIV's genetic sequence that predict a change in viral load (a measure of the severity of infection). Within a week and a half, the best submission had already outdone the best methods in the scientific literature.

About Anthony
Before founding Kaggle in 2009, Anthony worked in the macroeconomic modelling areas of the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Treasury. During an internship at The Economist magazine in 2008, Anthony wrote an article about the use of data-driven decision making by companies. He became so fascinated by the power of data that he left his day-job as an econometrician to found Kaggle.
                                 
5:45pm - light refreshments in the Staff Tea Room, Richard Berry Building, University of Melbourne.
6:15pm – seminar in the Russell Love Theatre, Richard Berry Building, University of Melbourne.

You are invited to join Anthony at a nearby restaurant after the meeting.

Events of interest

2010 Victorian Mathematics and Statistics Students' Conference

Friday, 2 July 2010; Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne, Parkville.

The aims of the 2010 Victorian Mathemetics and Statistics Students' Conference (2010vmssc) are:

    * to stimulate communication between mathematics and statistics graduate students from different Victorian universities;
    * to provide a forum in which students may share experiences of graduate study;
    * to provide Victorian graduate students an opportunity to gain an understanding of the research being conducted across the state;
    * to provide honours and masters students with the opportunities to explore PhD research options and gain personal perspective from PhD students from across Victoria.

This conference is aimed primarily at Victorian postgraduates in mathematics and statistics, across the state. It is run by students, for students. This means that any student can use this conference as an opportunity to practice giving a talk, which they may present at an AustMS meeting.

We are particularly interested in having at least one representative from every institution's mathematics/statistics department on the committee. The hope is that the conference is inclusive of all mathematics and statistics graduate students from across Victoria.

There is no fee for registration. To register, please see the website: http://www.2010vmssc.ms.unimelb.edu.au/