IASC News June 2019

The Conference of Data Science, Statistics & Visualisation (DSSV 2019)
The conference of Data Science, Statistics & Visualisation (DSSV 2019) will take place on August 13-
15, 2019 in Kyoto, Japan. This conference is a satellite meeting of the 62nd ISI World Statistics Congress.

The venue of DSSV 2019 is the Imadegawa Campus of Doshisha
University (neighboring Kyoto Imperial Palace). The details can be
found at https://iasc-isi.org/dssv2019/, including information abstract
submission, registration, and hotel bookings convenient for the area of the venue.
The conference consists of contributions to practical aspects of data science, statistics and
visualization. They cover topics such as machine learning, verbalization of data, big data
infrastructures and analytics, advanced computing, and other important themes.

In addition, the invited talk sessions from the International Society for Business and Industrial
Statistics (ISBIS) and others will contribute to an exciting program. The invited talk sessions
include the three ones for the topics “Machine Learning”, “Bio-Statistics/Informatics”, and
“Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience” from Japanese statistical societies and
neuroscientist group.

Keynote talks are presentd by Di Cook, Kwan-Liu Ma, and
Richard Samworth. Invited talks are given by Genevera Allen,
Yongdai Kim, Hidetoshi Shimodaira, and Huixia Judy Wang.
Those talks ensure a high-quality scientific program.
The venue can be reached within 10 minutes via a subway from the Kyoto
central station. The welcome reception and conference dinner will
be thrown at the areas close to the downtown, to which attendants
can move from the venue by courtesy buses. Since 794 to 1868,
Japanese emperors had lived in Kyoto, and there are 17 world
heritages (including Kiyomizu-dera presented right), each of which
can be reached by a half-day travel at most from the venue.

 

Course on Text as Data in Economics
16 – 17 July 2019, Mannheim, Germany

LECTURER: Leif Anders Thorsrud | Norges Bank and BI Norwegian Business School

The course introduces participants to economic literature in which text is
used as data and provides information on methods and software for
working with textual data. By the end of the course, you will know more
about how text can be, and has been, applied to answer economically
relevant questions. You will be able to do some analysis yourself and will
be well equipped to take more detailed and advanced courses on the topic.

The course is addressed to PhD and advanced Master’s students
interested in using text as data for economic analysis. A preliminary course to learning the
basics of Python will be provided on 15 July in the afternoon.

The participation fee is 80 Euros. Travel and accommodation costs have to be covered by the
participants.

ORGANISATION: Irene Bertschek · Georg Licht · Peter Winker
CONTACT: ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (Mannheim,
Germany)
ZEW Research Departments “Digital Economy” and
“Economics of Innovation and Industrial Dynamics”
P.O. Box 10 34 43
68034 Mannheim · Germany
E-MAIL: textasdata@zew.de
INTERNET: http://www.zew.de/Textasdata2019

 

Call for Contributed Talks and Posters for the 2019 IASC-ARS Conference
2-5 December 2019, Hong Kong

The 11th IASC-ARS Conference will be held at the University of Hong Kong, China, on 2-5
December 2019. The theme of the conference is “Statistical Computing for AI and Big Data”.
The aim of the conference is to provide a forum for the discussion and exchange of ideas, new
concepts and recent methods in statistics. Philip Leung-ho Yu from the Department of Statistics
and Actuarial Science of the University of Hong Kong will be the General Chair of the
conference.

This conference will provide a platform for researchers from academia and industry to share
their latest findings, exhibit the latest studies and applications, and build up networks with peers in variety areas, including but not limited to, Bayesian computation, big data analytics,
biostatistics, computer graphics, computer intensive inferential methods, data mining and
machine learning, econometrics, graphical models, image processing and uncertainty
quantification.

The conference will consist of keynote speeches, tutorials, invited talks, contributed talks and
posters. The official language for all submissions is English.
Submission of abstracts for contributed talks and posters may be made via the online
submission system. Click here for the poster of Call for Contributed Talks and Posters for
the details.

Registration system is now open. The early-bird deadline is July 31, 2019. There will be two half-day tutorials (1: Statistical network data analysis; 2: Anomaly detection using
unsupervised learning algorithms) to be held on December 2, 2019. Registration for the
tutorials will be accepted on a first come, first served basis due to limited seats.
Keynote Speakers: Wolfgang Karl Hardle, Jun Liu, and Qiwei Yao
Local organizer: Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, The University of Hong Kong
We look forward to seeing you in Hong Kong to attend the IASC-ARS 2019 conference and to
experience the fusion of Chinese and Western cultures and beauty of Hong Kong!

Important Dates:
15 June 2019 Deadline for submission of abstracts of invited talks/contributed
talks/posters
8 July 2019 Notification of acceptance of contributed talks/posters
31 July 2019 Early bird registration closes
2-5 December 2019 Conference

2019 IFCS conference

The IFCS 2019 conference theme is ‘Data Analysis and Rationality in a Complex World’ and will take place in the Thessaloniki Concert Hall, Thessaloniki,
Greece. The venue is located along the coast of the city, close to the city center and the airport. The
conference opening will take place on August 26 late afternoon and pre-conference workshops will be held.

The conference sessions will start on August 27 in the morning, and will close on August 29
with a full day conference program and a conference dinner. Details can be found here.
The International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS) was founded in 1985 and is
composed of many statistical societies all over the world. IFCS is an interdisciplinary and
international organisation whose main purposes are to promote the scientific study of
classification and clustering (including systematic methods of creating classifications from
data), and to disseminate scientific and educational information related to its fields of interests.

The conference will bring together some of the leading researchers and practitioners in the
related areas and will provide an opportunity for exchanging ideas, between researchers and
practitioners, and establishing networking and collaborations. Keynote speakers include Sofia
Olhede, Professor of Statistics at University College London and director of UCL’s Centre for
Data Science, Andy Mauromoustakos, Statistician for the AGRI STAT LAB at the University
of Arkansas Fayetteville campus, Julie Josse, Professor of Statistics at Ecole Polytechnique
in France specializing in missing data, visualization and the nonparametric analyses of
complex data structures, David Hunter, Professor at Penn State Department of Statistics
working on statistical computing, models for social networks, and statistical clustering, Michael
Greenacre, Professor of Statistics at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona working mostly
on correspondence analysis and on compositional data analysis, Theodoros Evgeniou,
Professor of Decision Sciences and Technology Management at INSEAD in
France and an Academic Director of INSEAD eLab, a research and analytics
center, Vladimir Batagelj, Professor Emeritus of the University of Ljubljiana,
Slovenia, known for the book he coauthored on Generalized Blockmodeling
and Maria-Florina Balcan, Associate Professor at the School of Computer
Science Carnegie Mellon University where her main research interests are in machine
learning, artificial intelligence, and theoretical computer science.

The conference city was founded in 315 BC by Cassander, in honor of his wife Thessaloniki,
sister of Alexander the Great. Since then, and due to its strategic position, Thessaloniki has
been a commercial and cultural crossroad that brought together people and ideas from all over
the world. The signs of this uninterrupted urban activity for more than 2,300 years are evident
in each corner of the city. Nowadays, Thessaloniki is a big, modern city, with a population of
around one million, and an important administrative and financial center of the Balkans. The
warm and vibrant city life is largely influenced by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; the
largest university in Greece, with more than 72,000 undergraduate and 8,000 postgraduate
students. Thessaloniki is surrounded by places of great natural and historic beauty such as
Olympus National Park, Vergina, where the Royal tomb of Philip II, father of Alexander the
Great was found, the autonomous Mouth Athos, which is forbidden to women and children,
and Halkidiki with its beautiful sandy beaches.

 

Cluster Benchmarking Challenge Call

Neutral Benchmarking Studies of Clustering

The Cluster Benchmarking Task Force of the International Federation of Classification
Societies (IFCS) is calling for neutral benchmarking studies in cluster analysis.
This call is part of a challenge connected with the 2019 IFCS conference in Thessaloniki,
Greece, August 26-29.

To achieve a cumulative building of knowledge on clustering and classification, careful
attention to benchmarking (performance comparison of methods) is very important. New
methods of data pre-processing, new data-analytic techniques, and new methods of output
post-processing, should be extensively and carefully compared with existing alternatives, and
existing methods should be part of neutral comparison studies. Benchmarking studies can
frequently been found in supervised learning, but are less common in unsupervised learning.
The Task Force has written a white paper (see a preprint here) that addresses the theoretical
and conceptual underpinnings of benchmarking in cluster analysis, and some practicalities for
performing sound benchmarking studies. The Task Force is now calling for individuals to
contribute neutral benchmarking studies on cluster analysis as part of a challenge.

 

New IASC and Taylor & Francis Affiliate Program and Discounts on
Book Purchases for IASC Members

IASC and Taylor & Francis have agreed on a new affiliate program that gives IASC members
a 20% discount on book purchases. IASC is pleased to announce its new affiliate agreement with Taylor & Francis. Taylor & Francis (and their CRC Press and Chapman & Hall branches) are the publishers of numerous statistical book series such as The R Series and Texts in Statistical Science and of numerous books in the area of Computational Statistics.

Our agreement with Taylor & Francis offers current IASC members a 20% discount on book
purchases when initiated through the IASC web page. You have to start at iasc-isi.org and
then click on the “IASC ISI Members Save 20% on CRC Press Books” link at the bottom of this
page. This redirects you to the IASC ISI web page maintained by Taylor & Francis / CRC
Press. Make your online order as usual. At the time of checkout, please enter IAS18 as promo
code (if necessary). Enjoy your discounted book purchases from Taylor & Francis.

 

Download: 2019-06_IASC