IASC News April 2021

 

Application for Scholarship to Present at DSSV 2021

Title: Application for Scholarships to Present at DSSV 2021

Summary: The IASC Executive Committee decided to use donations from 2020 for scholarships to present at DSSV 2021. Continue reading how to apply.

IASC received donations for its IASC Young Researcher Fund and its IASC Support Fund from its donors in 2020. A total amount of 320 Euro was received (295 Euro for the Young Researcher Fund and 25 Euro for the Support Fund). We would like to thank all of our donors again.

 

The IASC Executive Committee (EC) decided to use all of the donations for the goals outlined in the IASC Young Researcher Fund: “The IASC Young Researcher Travel Fund provides partial travel support to young IASC members from developing countries (see https://isi-web.org/index.php/resources/developing-countries for a list) aged 35 or younger to attend an IASC-sponsored event (such as a conference, workshop, school, or other). Preference will be given to young researchers from these countries who are in financial need and actively participate at the event as a speaker, poster presenter, or in another active role.”

 

With all major physical IASC conferences cancelled or postponed in 2021, the IASC EC decided to support presenters at the virtual DSSV 2021 conference (https://iasc-isi.org/dssv-ecda2021/) who are in need of financial support and meet the following conditions:

 

If you are in financial need to present at DSSV 2021 and meet all of the conditions above, please apply at https://iasc-isi.org/Young-Researcher-Travel-Fund.It is currently planned to cover half of the early bird registration fees of 30 Euro (for IASC members from developing countries and students) for approved applicants, i.e., 15 Euro.

The deadline for applications is May 23, 2021 via https://iasc-isi.org/Young-Researcher-Travel-Fund.   Decisions will be announced by June 1, 2021. Note that decision on abstract submission to DSSV 2021 will be announced by May 30, 2021.

Approved applicants can register at a “Approved IASC Sponsored Participant” rate of 15 Euro.at https://iasc-isi.org/dssv-ecda2021/register-now/. Approved applicants need to complete early bird registration by June 5, 2021, i.e., within 5 days after receiving e-mail notice.

In case of any clarifying questions, please contact IASC Membership Officer Ying Chen via e-mail (matcheny@nus.edu.sg).

Good luck with your application. We look forward to seeing you at the DSSV, giving your short interactive talk.

 

 

New ISI-Elected Members from IASC

The IASC-ISI Nomination Committee congratulates two new ISI elected members from IASC as a result of the first ISI election round in 2021: Marcelo Bourguignon (Brazil) and Fumio Ishioka (Japan).

 

2021 COMPSTAT Conference in Bologna Postponed to 23-26 August 2022

The 24th International Conference on Computational Statistics at the University of Bologna, Italy was rescheduled to 23-26 August 2022 (postponed initially from August 2020, and after from August 2021). For further details please see http://www.compstat2022.org

 

 

2022 COMPSTAT Conference in London Postponed to 25 August 2023

The 25th International Conference on Computational Statistics, London, UK was rescheduled to 22-25 August 2023 (postponed from August 2022).

 

2020 COMO Spring Course Postponed to 4-8 October 2021

2020 Spring Course on “Robust Statistics: Foundations and Recent Developments” organized by Francesca Greselin, Lake Como School of Advanced Studies (Como, Italy), was rescheduled to 4-8 October 2021 (postponed initially from May 2020, after from October 2020 and after from May 2021). The new registration deadline is 2 September 2021. For
further details see: https://rsfd.lakecomoschool.org/

 

 

 

 

Forthcoming Event: An Introduction to Functional Data Analysis for Density Functions in Bayes Spaces (Virtual location, April 29-30, 2021)

The European Regional Section of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC-ERS), the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC), and the International Statistical Institute (ISI) are pleased to invite PhD students, Master students and also researchers in statistics and data analysis to attend the IASC-ERS Webinar Course “An Introduction to Functional Data Analysis for Density Functions in Bayes spaces”. The course will be team-taught by Alessandra Menafoglio (Politecnico di Milano, Italy), Karel Hron and Jitka Machalová (Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic). It will take place online on April 29-30, 2021, from 14h00 to 17h00, Rome-Prague, GMT+2.

 

The IASC-ERS Courses aim to spread the knowledge base and advances in Statistical Computing in Europe and the wide world, to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art of the ongoing research in computational statistics, to provide an overall perspective of the application of computational statistics in data science problems, to present applications where computational statistics have been crucial to solve problems in real-life applications, and to increase the number of researchers and practitioners in computational statistics and data science.

 

The analysis of distributional data (probability density functions or histogram data) has recently gained increasing attention in the applications. Distributional data are often observed by themselves, or as result of aggregation of large streams of data. The course will provide an introduction to the analysis of these data using a Functional Data Analysis (FDA) approach, grounded on the perspective of Bayes spaces. These spaces are mathematical spaces whose points are densities (or, more generally, measures), which generalize to the FDA setting the Aitchison simplex for multivariate compositional data. The course will give an overview of the theory of Bayes spaces, as well as of statistical methods developed in this setting. All the methods will be illustrated through examples from real case studies.

 

Instructors:

  • Alessandra Menafoglio (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
  • Karel Hron (Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic)
  • Jitka Machalova (Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic)

 

 

Topics:

  • The geometry of Bayes spaces
  • Smoothing splines for densities
  • Dimensionality reduction in Bayes spaces: Simplicial Functional Principal Component Analysis
  • Anomaly detection for density data based on control charts
  • Density-on-scalar, scalar-on-density and density-on-density functional regression
  • Spatial statistics for distributional observations: spatial modeling & kriging

 

AGENDA

(Local time: Rome-Prague, GMT+2)

Thursday, April 29th 2021:

  • Opening: 14h00 – 14h15
  • Session 1: 14h15 – 15h00 (The geometry of Bayes spaces)
  • Session 2: 15h10 – 15h55 (Smoothing splines for densities)
  • Session 3: 16h05 – 16h50 (Dimensionality reduction in Bayes spaces: Simplicial Functional Principal Component Analysis)

 

Friday, April 30th 2021:

  • Session 1: 14h00 – 14h45 (Anomaly detection for density data based on control charts)
  • Session 2: 14h55 – 15h40 (Density-on-scalar, scalar-on-density and density-on-density functional regression)
  • Session 3: 15h50 – 16h35 (Spatial statistics for distributional observations: spatial modeling & kriging)
  • Closing: 16h35 – 16h45

 

REGISTRATION  PROCEDURE

The IASC-ERS Webinar “An Introduction to Functional Data Analysis for Density Functions in Bayes spaces” will be held virtually using the platform GoToWebinar from April 29-30, 2021. The official language is English. The registration deadline for early registration is Tuesday, April 27th 2021. The course is free of charge.

 

Please complete the IASC-ERS Webinar Registration Form at

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8667082239416059148.

If you have any questions or you need any help, please do not hesitate to contact us at iasc.ers.21@gmail.com.

 

To become an IASC-ERS member, please complete the Membership Application Form at

https://www.isi-web.org/index.php/membership/individual-membership/iasc.

 

All participants are expected to adhere to the ISI Community Principles and Conduct Policy

(https://www.isi-web.org/index.php/about-isi/policies/community-conduct).

 

More information about GoToWebinar please visit https://www.gotomeeting.com/webinar.

GoToWebinar application is also available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone:

https://support.goto.com/webinar/help/gotowebinar-for-mobile-devices-g2w050033

 

The Deadline for submissions to IASC Data Analysis Competition is April 30th!

Title: The Deadline for submissions to the IASC Data Analysis Competition is April 30th!

Summary:  The International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC) invites submissions for the Data Analysis Competition. The focus of the 2021 competition is the analysis of quality-of-life related data.

 

The International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC) announces the Data Analysis Competition 2021.

 

IASC is an Association of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) whose objectives are to promote the theory, methods, and practice of statistical computing and to foster interest and knowledge in effective and efficient statistical computing through international contacts among researchers and professionals in statistics, computer science, and related areas at universities, organizations, institutions, governments, and the general public in different countries of the world, to convert data into information and knowledge.

For the 2021 Data Competition, winners will be invited to present their work at the Data Science, Statistics, and Visualisation Conference (DSSV-2021) to be held at Erasmus University, Rotterdam (July 7-9, 2021) or at some other event organized by IASC (see https://iasc-isi.org/events-all/), depending on the current COVID-19 situation. The winners will also be invited to submit a manuscript for possible publication (following peer review) to IASC’s Journal of Data Science, Statistics, and Visualisation (see https://jdssv.org). In addition, IASC will sponsor participation at the virtual 63rd ISI World Statistics Congress (July 12-16, 2021) and one year IASC membership to all authors of submissions selected by the Committee on Data Analysis Competition; see https://iasc-isi.org/become-a-member/ for an overview of IASC membership benefits.

 

The theme of the 2021 competition is around the analysis of quality-of-life related data and the submission should clearly describe the significance of your findings either for individuals or for the society. The primary data set may come from one or more databases but connecting information from different databases may help to obtain interesting and original conclusions.

 

There are currently many sources related to the spread of COVID-19, allowing to investigate topics like social inequalities in post-COVID-19 world or to compare effects of governments’ actions, but we encourage you to investigate also any other quality-of-life related issues (health, education, environment, social inequalities, etc.) In your analysis, you may concentrate on individuals, a single region (e.g., your own country), a continent or even the entire world.

Your entry must be submitted as a poster in PDF format and you must clearly specify the source of your data, i.e., by listing the relevant URLs and the steps required to obtain the data.

 

The competition is open to everyone who is interested in presenting their poster at WSC 2021. You are allowed to work individually or in a small group of up to five participants on your poster. Posters will be judged according to these criteria:

  1. Appropriateness of analysis.
  2. Novelty of approaches used in the analysis.
  3. Clarity of objectives, approaches, data management, displays, and results.
  4. Significance of findings.
  5. Generalizability of approaches to data sets in other areas.
  6. Overall quality of poster.

Not all posters are expected to meet all criteria to the same degree. Your poster may contain links to databases, computer programs, animations, and other external sources and it may (but need not) be accompanied by a short description (maximum five pages). All materials must be submitted in PDF format.

Updates and results of previous editions of the Data Analysis Competition may be found at https://iasc-isi.org/data-analysis-competition/

 

In addition to the previously announced travel awards and IASC memberships (among others) for the winners, additional book prizes will be offered by Springer. More specifically, Springer supports the competition by donating a book prize to the winners and an e-book prize for the best contribution from a developing country.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION:
Final submissions (PDF) are due on 30-th April 2021.
Submit to: dac.iasc@email.cz

FURTHER INFORMATION:
For all inquiries contact: Associate Professor Zdenek Hlavka: dac.iasc@email.cz

 

 

Forthcoming Event: LACSC 2021 program already available!

The 5th Latin American Conference on Statistical Computing will be held fully online from April 19 to April 21, 2021. The final conference program is already available at http://lacsc2020.itam.mx! The conference –which is jointly organized by ITAM, the IASC-LARS, and the ISI– has structured its program around the theme Statistical Computing for Intelligent Decision Making. The program consists of contributions from 4 notable keynote speakers, 6 invited paper sessions with 19 invited talks, 12 tracks with 48 contributed abstracts, and 10 posters. The conference has 71 confirmed speakers and 162 researchers have co-authored a paper. Authors come from 21 countries: Angola (1), Australia (2), Belgium (1), Benin (2), Brazil (29), Chile (18), Germany (1), France (2), Great Britain (1), Honduras (1), Italy (7), South Korea (1), Mexico (52), The Netherlands (1), Panama (1), Perú (9), Portugal (10), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2), El Salvador (1), United States of America (18), and Uruguay (2). The Latin American Regional Section feels very honored! Thank you very much.

 

This year the program includes an Invited Paper Session on Data Science and Visualization offered by R-Ladies and abstracts and papers in a variety of topics: multivariate analysis, Bayesian statistics, time series forecasting, non-parametric statistics, mixture models, minimal Markov models, exploratory methods, simulation and Monte Carlo methods, censored data analysis, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and computational statistics in COVID-19. The following presentations will be given by the keynote speakers,

  • Global frameworks for data ethics, Dr. Wendy Martinez, Bureau of Labor Statistics, USA
  • Data segmentation based on the local intrinsic dimension, Prof. Antonietta Mira, Universitá de la Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
  • Bayesian space-time partitioning by sampling and pruning spanning trees, Prof. Renato Assunção, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
  • Causal discovery: Learning graphical causal models from observational and interventional data, Prof. Luis Enrique Sucar, Inst. Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, México

All the information about the conference and the IASC-LARS School is available at http://lacsc2021.itam.mx.  The LACSC 2021 will be held fully online via Whova. Before to attend the conference, please visit the webpage https://whova.com/resources/how-to-guide/user-tutorial/. For more information, you can also visit the YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWO0ToUqApkJ0W6-PszihpQ.

 

All participants are expected to adhere to the ISI Community Principles and Conduct Policy (https://www.isi-web.org/index.php/about-isi/policies/community-conduct).

 

The aim of LACSC is to foster the progress of the theory, methods and practice of statistical computing in Latin America, and to become the main meeting point of the statistical computing scientific community in LA. This year, the call of papers of the conference gives an account of the interest of academics, scientists and professionals in methodological aspects of statistical computing and relevant applications for the Latin American community.

 

LACSC 2021 and 3rd IASC-LARS School extend the application deadline for scholarships to April 12, 2021

The deadline to apply for scholarships to attend the LACSC 2021 and the 3rd IASC-LARS School has been extended to April 12, 2021. For IASC-LARS students, the IASC will provide (a) 10 (or more) scholarships – 100% waiver in registration fee for people living in developing countries, (b) 5 (or more) scholarship – 50% waiver in registration fee for people living in developing countries. Please, find the list of low income countries at https://data.worldbank.org/income-level/low-income and the list of lower middle income countries at https://data.worldbank.org/income-level/lower-middle-income). Students from high-income Latin American countries are also encouraged to apply for scholarships. To apply for these scholarships, the candidates must be a member of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC). More information on how to become a member can be found here: https://iasc-isi.org/become-a-member/

 

 

Forthcoming Event: Registration for the 3rd LARS-IASC School still open!

The Third LARS-IASC School on Computational Statistics and Data Science will be held fully online from April 17 to April 18, 2021. This is a satellite event of LACSC 2021 jointly organized by the ITAM, the IASC-LARS, and the ISI.

This year the school theme is Stochastic Simulation and Reinforcement Learning. The two-day program is already available at http://lacsc2020.itam.mx/index.php/the-school/ and includes topics such as graphical models, Bayesian classifiers and networks, Markov chain Montecarlo, and reinforcement learning. The registration will remain open until Friday, April 16, 2021! You can’t miss this event! The timetable is as follows,

 

Time April 17, 2021 April 18, 2021
08:00 – 09:30 Probabilistic graphical models Stochastic simulation
09:30 – 09:45 Break Break
09:45 – 11:45 Probabilistic graphical models Reinforcement learning
11:45 – 12:00 Break Break
12:00 – 13:30 Probabilistic graphical models Reinforcement learning
15:00 – 16:30 Stochastic simulation Reinforcement learning
Total hours 6hrs 30min 6hrs 30min

 

The IACS-LARS School’s instructors are renowned professors in the discipline. Professor Dr. Luis Enrique Sucar received the BSc degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Tec de Monterrey (1980), the MSc degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University (1982), and the PhD degree in Computing from Imperial College (1992). He is a senior research in the National Institute for Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics, México. He has been an invited professor with the University of British Columbia, Canada, Imperial College, London, INRIA, France, and CREATE-NET, Italy. His main research interests include graphical models and probabilistic reasoning, and their applications in computer vision, robotics, energy, and biomedicine. He has more than 300 publications and has directed 21 Ph.D. thesis.

Professor Dr. David Muñoz received a BSc degree in Statistics from Universidad Nacional Agraria, the MSc degree in Mathematics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, and a MSc and PhD degree in Operations Research from Stanford University. He is Professor and Head of the Department of Industrial & Operations Engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). Visiting posts include Stanford University, Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, the University of Valencia, and the University of Texas at Austin. His main research interests include probabilistic and statistical aspects of simulation, applications of simulation, and design and analysis of business processes. He has more than 100 publications. His papers have appeared in Operations Research, Management Science, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, Business Process Management Journal, Operations Research Letters, International Transactions in Operational Research, and Interfaces, among others. He is co-author of the textbooks Introducción a la Ingeniería (Cengage Learning), and Simio y Simulación (Simio LLC), and author of Administración de Operaciones, Enfoque de Administración de Procesos de Negocios (Cengage Learning).

Professor Dr. Eduardo Morales received the BSc degree in Physical Engineering from Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Azcapotzalco (1984), a MSc degree in Artificial Intelligence from The University of Edinburgh (1985), and a PhD degree in Computing from The Alan Turing Institute – University of Stratchclyde (1992). He is a senior research in the National Institute for Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics, México. He has been an invited researcher at the Electric Power Research Institute, USA, and the Instituto de Investigaciones Eléctricas, México, an invited professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and the Tec de Monterrey, Mexico. His main research interests include machine learning, artificial intelligence, relational reinforcement learning and robotics. He has more than 100 publications and has directed 11 Ph.D. thesis.

 

 

News from the IASC Executive Committee (January – April 2021)

Title: Summary of News from the IASC Executive Committee

Summary:  The IASC Executive Committee discussed upcoming elections, physical symposia, use of donations, and much more

 

The IASC Executive Committee (EC) became very active in the past three months, preparing our upcoming elections, dealing with physical symposia, discussing the use of donations, and much more. Specifically:

 

DOWNLOAD: 2021_04_IASC