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Annual General Meeting of the WA Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia

  • 9 Mar 2021
  • 5:30 PM (AWST)
  • The Cheryl Praeger Lecture Theatre, University of Western Australia/Online

At this meeting, office bearers for the various committee positions will be voted on.  This will be followed by a seminar at 6 pm by Dr. Alun Pope (AStat)Principal, Analytical Insight Pty Ltd Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Eastern Health Clinical School (Monash University)

Consulting Environments and their Consequences.

There are at least two different environments for applied statistical practice: the academic, scientific model is about the publication of research; the commercial, industrial model is about getting results that can be used in a timely fashion for profit. He will discuss, with illustrations from his experience in both academic and commercial consulting, some of the differences and similarities between different environments and some of the consequences these have for the way statistics is carried out,as well as the labeling of the process as statistics or data science, and whether this matters.

Biography: Alun is an Accredited Statistician (AStat) who since February 2018 has been a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University's Eastern Health Clinical School, now an Adjunct in that role. He is also the Director and CEO of Analytical Insight Pty Ltd, a consulting company.

After a PhD in Pure Mathematics (London) and an MSc in Statistics (ANU), Alun's career has followed two intersecting paths: as a teaching and research academic, and as a statistical consultant in industry and university environments.

He has worked at Newcastle, UNSW, Sydney and Monash universities. At Newcastle he became the Head of the Statistics Department in the 1990s, during which time he started commercial consulting for a variety of organisations, including CSL, Telstra and the Department of Defence.

He was Head of Research at the financial modelling company Rismark, leading a small team, Executive Manager St George Insurance Australia, Statistics Consultant at APRA, and was also a private consultant, as a partner in a small company (FarStar).

At the University of Sydney, Alun set up the Statistical Consulting unit in 2015 and was its Director until the end of 2017. Staff and students from a wide range of schools and disciplines had access to this unit and Alun and his staff advised on PhD theses and research projects in a variety of disciplines, such as archaeology, biochemistry, ecology, political science, music education, clinical trials, survey analysis, etc.

He has published papers on a range of pure and applied topics, as well as being the author of many consulting reports. Recent papers have appeared in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, Mycoses and Stroke.

He now lives in Perth, Western Australia.

Members and their guests are invited to join the speaker for dinner following the talk.  

Wine and cheese will be served from just prior to the start of the AGM at 5.15pm. Visitors are welcome to attend. Parking is free on University of Western Australia grounds from 5 pm.

Documents for the meeting:

2021-03-09 March 9th SSA WA Annual General Meeting Notice

SSA WA 2020-03-10 AGM minutes

SSA WA 2021-03-09 AGM agenda

If you are unable to physical attend you can log onto zoom. Please click here.

 If you have any questions regarding the upcoming meeting please click here.
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