UP-STAT 2015 Conference - Statistical Modeling in the Era of Data Science

April 10, 2015 - March 11, 2015
SUNY Geneseo

Fourth Annual Joint Conference of the Upstate Chapters of the American Statistical Association

Geneseo, NY, April 10th-11th, 2015

The theme for this year's meeting is "Statistical Modeling in the Era of Data Science." It is important to emphasize the central role of statistics in the domain of what has become known as "Data Science". We are interested in all submissions related to statistical modeling and inference and their role in making sense of large amounts of information.

Selected Themes for this Year's Conference

Novel approaches to data analysis

If you have developed new statistical methods or approaches to the analysis of data, we strongly encourage you to consider submitting an abstract to present your work.

Applications of statistical and computational methods to interesting data sets

If you are an applied statistician working in academia or in industry, and have worked on interesting problems involving the analysis of large, complex data sets, then consider submitting an abstract to present your problem and the analysis that you performed to gain insight into your scientific question.

Statistics education in secondary schools (and beyond)

Given the vital importance of promoting statistics in secondary education, we would especially encourage abstract submissions dealing with statistics education in secondary schools (and beyond). Presentations could involve motivating examples of experimental design or statistical analysis derived from real-world problems; strategies for emphasizing the connections between probability and the development, evaluation, and implementation of statistical methods that are used to analyze data; ideas on how to integrate frequentist and Bayesian philosophies in a balanced curriculum; or any other innovative ideas concerning this topic.

Fun Statistics

As part of this education sub-theme, we are soliciting one session of "fun statistics" examples. This might include short demonstrations of probability examples (e.g., the Monty Hall problem or the birthday problem) at a widely accessible level that others could replicate and show to their students. We will award a prize for the best presentation in this session, and this competition is open to students, high school teachers, and anyone else with interesting, informative, and entertaining examples.

Data Competition

To further encourage student participation, we will hold a Urban Analytics competition. A team of no more than 4 students may enter the competition by registering on the data competition page by Friday, March 13th, 2015. The data set will be accessible starting onFebruary 13th to teams that have registered for the competition. Teams will be required to submit their results and the code that they used to obtain their results by Friday, March 20, 2015. Prizes will be awarded to the top 3 teams, all of whom will be asked to present their results at the conference. Further details concerning this competition are available on the data competition page.

Keynote Speaker

This year, we are extremely fortunate to have Professor Kosuke Imai from the Department of Politics at Princeton University as our keynote speaker. Professor Imai is an entertaining and engaging speaker who has made important contributions to causal inference, survey methodology, and applications of Bayesian statistical methods to social science research. Professor Imai's presentation, entitled "A New Automated Redistricting Simulator Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo", is sure to be an engaging and unique experience!

Click here for more information.

Category: Talks