Join us for the Belz Lecture and ECSS Showcase, a flagship event of the Victorian & Tasmanian Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia, celebrating excellence, innovation, and community across all levels of the statistical profession.
This daytime gathering features:
* A showcase of presentations by Early Career and Student Statisticians (ECSS)
* A catered networking lunch, offering opportunities to connect across academia, government, and industry.
* The formal proceedings conclude with the prestigious Belz Lecture, delivered by Professor Thomas Lumley (University of Auckland), a leading figure in biostatistics. The Lecture is free to attend, although we kindly request that you register.
Whether you're a seasoned statistician, an applied professional, or just starting your journey, this event is designed to offer a dynamic mix of insight, collaboration, and inspiration for everyone in the statistical community.
The call for ECSS Showcase abstracts is now open and will close at 5:00 PM AEST on Friday, 5 September 2025.
Schedule:
11:00 am: Introduction (10 minutes)
11:10 am: ECSS showcase (90 minutes)
12:40 pm: Catered lunch (50 minutes)
1:30 pm: Belz Lecture (60 minutes)
2:30 pm: Main event finish
2:45 pm: Social drinks at a nearby pub
Belz Lecture: Laws and Orders
Even in simple introductory statistics we encounter ordinal data as inputs, and rank tests as analyses. Ordinal data is supposed to give an ordering for categories with no numerical values needed; rank tests are supposed to give an ordering of distributions that isn't sensitive to the actual numerical values. In this talk I will show that both ideas have serious weaknesses that are not as well appreciated as they should be. Fundamentally, decision-making under uncertainty forces us to assign numbers, and attempts to avoid this will backfire. There will be cameo appearances by the Efron dice, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, and the rock-paper-scissors game. Mentions of non-separable topologies will be kept to a bare minimum.
Bio: Professor Thomas Lumley
Thomas Lumley is a theoretical and applied biostatistician. For the past 15 years he has been Chair in Biostatistics, in the Department of Statistics at the University of Auckland. Thomas is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the Royal Society Te Apaarangi, and a member of the R Core Development Team.
Thomas was born in Melbourne and studied Pure Mathematics at Monash, Applied Statistics at Oxford, and Biostatistics at the University of Washington. Thomas has research interests in statistical computing, sampling, semiparametric theory, clinical trials, and whatever problems his collaborators come up with. He writes about statistics in the media at the StatsChat blog.
Cancellation Policy:
Cancellations received prior to two weeks before the event will be refunded, minus the Stripe processing fee (1.75% + $0.30 per transaction) and an SSA administration fee of $20.
From then on, no part of the registration fee will be refunded. However, registrations are transferable within the same organisation. Please advise any changes to events@statsoc.org.au.
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