Luncheon Announcement
Noon to 1:30PM
TUESDAY March 17, 2009
The East Bank Club
500 N Kingsbury, Chicago 60610

Please join us for another exciting talk in the CCASA's 2008-2009 Luncheon program!

Our March speaker is Jay Mousa, Regional Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. His talk is entitled: Alternative Measures of Unemployment.

Abstract:

The national unemployment rate is one of the country's most closely watched economic indicators. However, this single measure may not tell the full story. To provide a more complete picture of the nation's employment situation, the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics publishes a wide variety of unemployment statistics beyond the headline figure. The luncheon presentation will discuss these alternate measures of unemployment and their uses in understanding the complexities of the United States' labor market.

Plans for our future luncheons will be included in our upcoming announcements and in the Parameter. Lunch is $30 for CCASA members, $35 for nonmembers. Nonmembers, join the chapter for a year for only $15 and get the discount plus all the other benefits of membership!

As usual, the Lucille Derrick Fund will purchase a limited number of tickets for students who wish to attend. If you are a student and would like to take advantage of this offer, please register online below, and contact Lou Fogg, expressing your interest.

Click here to register online.

The April luncheon, will be held on April 28, 2009, and the speaker will be Rakesh Vohra from Northwestern University. Dr Vohra will present a talk entitled Predicting the "Unpredictable". The talk concerns how humans behave when asked to predict events of an unknown nature.

For any questions or concerns, please contact:
Lou Fogg, VP for Luncheons
Phone: 312-942-6239 or E-mail: louis_fogg@rush. edu

Please Spread the Word!

Short Course on Longitudinal Data Analysis
Presenter:
Don Hedeker, University of Illinois-Chicago
Sponsored by the Chicago Chapter Of the American Statistical Organization.

Date: Friday, March 20th, 2009

Location: The University of Chicago's Booth School of Business

The Gleacher Center
450 North Cityfront Plaza Drive
Chicago, Illinois 60611-4316

Time: 8:30am-5pm

Course summary
The course will provide an introduction to longitudinal data analysis using mixed effects regression models, drawing on material from the book Longitudinal Data Analysis (Wiley, 2006) using the new SuperMix statistical software program (a 15-day trial edition of SuperMix is available at www.ssicentral.com/supermix/index.html). The focus will be on application of these models, with direct application illustrated using SuperMix.

In particular, the basic mixed-effects regression model for continuous outcomes will be introduced and described, including use of polynomials for expressing change across time, the multilevel representation of the mixed model, treatment of time-invariant and time-varying covariates, and modeling of the variance-covariance structure of the repeated measures.
It will be shown how these models can allow for missing data across time in terms of the outcome variable, thus permitting analysis of subjects who have incomplete data across time.
Finally, because categorical outcomes are common in many research areas, description and application of mixed-effects logistic regression models will also be covered.

Attendees are encouraged to download the trial software onto their laptops prior to course, and to bring their laptops with them to the course.

Registration

Early-bird pricing extended to March 16th!!
Early Registration Fees:
Student $45
Member $295
Non-member $395

After March 16th, 2009, add $50 to the early registration fees.

The fee includes extensive materials, breakfast items, lunch, and refreshments for AM and PM breaks. Space is limited.
To ensure yourself a place, please register early.

Registration deadline March 17, 2009.
Click here to register.

Questions?
Contact Tony Babinec, VP Workshops (tbabinec@sbcglobal.net).

Instructor Biography
Please click here for Don Hedeker's Bio.

2009 Statistical Advocate of the Year Award Ceremony
Presented to Avinash Kaushik
Google Analytics Evangelist and Author of Occam's Razor analytics blog
And
2009 Conference

Topic: Proliferation of Digital Information and Recent Uses in Statistical Applications
Date: Friday, May 15, 2009
Time: 9:00am - 5:00pm
Location: Leo Burnett Building, 35 West Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL (Corner of Wacker and Dearborn - sign in at reception desk)
One byproduct of the Digital Age is the proliferation of information. Our opportunity (and challenge) is to use this wealth of data to drive research, inform decision-making, and evaluate outcomes. This conference will highlight the use of digital information in a variety of fields to support these objectives.

Conference Program

9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.
Registration and continental breakfast

9:30 a.m. - 9:45 a.m.
Conference Welcome by John VanderPloeg, Conference VP

9:45 a.m. - 10:45 a.m.
Session One: Data Democracy - How Google is Bringing Math to the Masses
Presenter: Kristen Nomura (Google)

10:45 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Morning break

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Session Two: Measuring the Success of a Website - a Practical Application
Presenter: Jim Sterne (Web Analytics Association)

12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Lunch : Statistical Advocate of Year Award Ceremony
Award Recipient: Avinash Kaushik (Google Analytics Evangelist and Author of Occam's Razor analytics blog)

2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Session Three: Netflix Recommender Competition: Lessons Learned
Presenter: Ces Bertino (Netflix Competition Participant)

3:00 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.
Afternoon break

3:15 p.m. - 4:15 p.m.
Session Four: Statistical Applications in Text Analytics
Presenter: Seth Grimes (Alta Plana Corporation)

4:15 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Question and answer session

Statistical Advocate of the Year Award
Recipient: Avinash Kaushik
Avinash Kaushik is the author of the best selling book Web Analytics: An Hour A Day. He is also the Analytics Evangelist for Google and the co-founder of Market Motive Inc.

As a thought leader Avinash puts a common sense framework around the often frenetic world of web research and analytics, and combines that with this philosophy that investing in talented Analysts is the key to long term success. He is also a staunch advocate of listening to the consumer, and is committed to helping organizations unlock the value of web data.

Avinash works with some of the largest companies in the world to help them evolve their online marketing and analytics strategies to become data driven and customer centric organizations.

He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences in the US and Europe, such as Ad-Tech, Monaco Media Forum, iCitizen, and SES, as well as at major Universities, such as Stanford, the University of Virginia and the University of Utah.

You'll find Avinash's web analytics blog, at http://www.kaushik.net/avinash .

Conference Session Details
Session One
Data Democracy: How Google is Bringing Math to the Masses
Over the last decade, a number of books and magazines have proclaimed that math is the key to gaining a competitive edge in business. Yet for every successful example of a data-driven company, there are many others who struggle to effectively tap into digital information - often because data and statistics are intimidating to key decision-makers. Kristen Nomura, central region manager for Google's Search & Analytics team, will show ways that Google has "democratized data" for marketers. By offering tools that are both free to the public and easy to use, Google has brought concepts like website analytics and multivariate testing to the masses. Kristen will discuss ways that advertisers big and small are leveraging these resources to optimize their marketing strategies, uncover new opportunities and stay aligned with changing customer behavior.

Speaker: Kristen Nomura, Central Region Manager, Search & Analytics, Google
Kristen manages a team of consultants who help advertisers and agencies maximize the effectiveness of their search marketing campaigns and website user experience, through the use of measurement tools including Google Analytics and Website Optimizer. Prior to joining Google, she was Director of Client Solutions at ClearGauge, a boutique consulting firm focused on online marketing strategies and analytics for Fortune 500 companies. Kristen holds a Bachelors degree in French and Economics from Ohio State, and a Master of Science degree in Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) from Northwestern University.

Session Two
Measuring the Success of a Website - a Practical Application
Since 1993, companies have been building websites and trying to attract the world to their home pages. How's it going? On a global scale, very well. Several companies are dedicated to measuring the number of people online and where they are headed. But what about the individual websites? Are they worth the effort? Can they be improved? Jim Sterne, founder of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and chairman of the Web Analytics Association walks through the available data sets that web marketers are analyzing. He describes how leading organizations are waking up to the power of statistics to optimize their marketing and even point the way to better business decisions.

Speaker: Jim Sterne
Jim Sterne is an international speaker on electronic marketing and customer interaction with a focus on measuring the value of the Internet as a medium for creating and strengthening customer relationships. Sterne has written six books on Internet advertising, marketing and customer service including, "Web Metrics; Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success." Sterne is the producer of the International eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and is the Founding President and current Chairman of the Web Analytics Association. Sterne was named one of the 50 most influential people in digital marketing by Revolution, the United Kingdom's premier interactive marketing magazine.

Session Three
Netflix Recommender Competition: Lessons Learned
Netflix is an online movie rental service. On October 2006, it launched a $1,000,000 competition to develop a collaborative filtering algorithm that beats Netflix's proprietary algorithm by at least 10%. The competition has attracted tens of thousands of teams from 180 different countries. After many debates about whether the prize is actually winnable, more than two years into the contest, the leading team is 0.37% away from the prize. Ces Bertino will provide an overview of the problem, discuss specific challenges of dealing with the dataset and will review some of the major techniques used by the top teams in the leaderboard.

Speaker: Ces Bertino
Ces Bertino is a senior software engineer for General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. He has over 15 years experience designing state of the art commercial and military systems in the telecommunications and aerospace industries. He has been participating in the Netflix challenge since May, 2007. Mr. Bertino holds a B.Sc. (Honors) degree in Computer Science from the University of Western Australia.

Session Four
Statistical Applications in Text Analytics
Text analytics, also known as text data mining, is the use of software to automate document processing and to extract meaningful "features" -- names, facts, attitudes -- from text, turning documents into data sources. Documents as used in this definition range from e-mail messages and contact-center notes to on-line blog and forum postings to business reports and scientific papers with lots of other types in between.

The presentation will introduce statistical, linguistic, and machine learning techniques applied to textual sources. Seth Grimes will cover analysis processes from search and information retrieval through clustering, classification, and visualization of text-derived information. He will discuss the business case for text analytics and benefits delivered in applications in the life sciences, customer service, and semantic search.

Speaker: Seth Grimes

Seth Grimes is a business intelligence and decision systems expert. He is founding chair of the Text Analytics Summit, contributing editor at TechWeb's Intelligent Enterprise magazine, and principal consultant at Washington DC-based Alta Plana Corporation. Seth consults, writes, and speaks on information-systems strategy, data management and analysis systems, industry trends, and emerging analytical technologies.

Registration and Fee for the 2009 ASA Conference and SAY Award Fee:
$95 for Chicago ASA Student members
$175 for Chicago ASA Chapter members for Web Analytics Association members
$225 for non-members

Click here to register online.

Suggested Hotels:

Club Quarters/ Chicago Central Loop location - 111 W Adams ST(a discounted rate is available if booked before April 14 - reference group code PUB009)
Westin Chicago
Renaissance Hotel
Sheraton Hotel
Embassy Suites Chicago - Downtown Lakefront
InterContinental Chicago
Hyatt Regency Chicago
Swiss Hotel Chicago

WBC Study Proves Inconclusive

Posted Mar. 6, 2009 9:36 am by Ben Badler, Baseball America
USA Today has published research that attempts to quantify the dangers of pitchers participating in the World Baseball Classic, based on the pitchers who participated in the 2006 WBC:

USA TODAY analyzed regular-season statistics of every major league pitcher who participated in the spring tournament.

The results show nearly four out of every five pitchers recorded a higher ERA in 2006 than in the previous year (among the 59 who pitched at least 20 innings each year). And more than one in three spent time on the disabled list in '06.

ERAs went up 5.6% throughout MLB in 2006, but the increase was significantly higher among WBC pitchers: 18.4%.

Of the 59 who pitched 20 or more innings in the majors in 2005 and '06: ·78% posted a higher ERA in 2006; ·42% registered an ERA that increased by one run or more. ·The average ERA of the WBC group jumped from 3.69 in '05 to 4.37 the following season, while the ERA throughout all of the majors increased less than a quarter of a run (4.28 to 4.52).

The U.S. team was strongly affected, as 12 of the 13 pitchers recorded higher ERAs; eight went up more than a run.

Sorry, folks, but this is correlation, not causation. Let's take a closer look, just using the Team USA pitchers from the 2006 roster as an example. I've excluded Al Leiter since, as the USA Today writers point out, he did not pitch for a major league team during the 2006 season. Each player's career ERA is through the end of the 2005 season.

To read further, click here.

The NIC-ASA Summer Workshop will be held on Thursday, June 18, 2009 in Northbrook, IL .
The NIC ASA has invited two speakers: Dr. Sumithra Mandrekar from the Mayo Clinic will talk about predictive biomarkers in clinical trials, and Dr. Li Zhang from the genomics group of CDER/FDA will talk about FDA experiences and perspectives on pharmacogenomics (PGx) with some insights on the future of PGx for the pharmaceutical industry.

For more details, please visit the NIC-ASAʼs website

Editor: Linda Burtch (312) 629-2400

PARAMETER, newsletter of the Chicago Chapter of the American Statistical Association, is published 10 times a year as a service to its members. To submit material for publication, contact the Editor, Linda Burtch, email: lburtch@smithhanley.com

PARAMETER provides a job listing service by publishing Positions Available and Positions Wanted, the latter being free to Chapter members. Companies may list positions for $75. Contact the Editor for more information.

For additional information about Chicago Chapter ASA, please visit us on the web at: www.ChicagoASA.org Also, visit the National ASA web site www.amstat.org.

Email change of address to: suzanne.niemi@walgreens.com

email: newsletter@chicagoasa.org

web: http://www.chicagoasa.org