A registration form can be found on the back sheet of the newsletter. The registration fee is $15 and that will include a fee lunch (see above). It is important that you register early. A lunch will not be included for late registrations, as the hotel needs advanced notice for meal preparation.

Following the spring meeting, the chapter is going to kick off a conference dedicated to promoting excellence in the art teaching of statistics.

The spring meeting will feature the annual student presentation competition and an awards luncheon. Students wishing to partake in the 15-minute presentation competition should submit an abstract of 200 words or less to:

William Navidi

The Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences

Colorado School of Mines

Golden, CO 80401-1887

(303) 273-3489 FAX 273-3875

wnavidi@mines.edu

ABSTRACT DEADLINE: March 3, 1998.

There will be a $50 cash prize for winning the competition. In addition, this year we will initiate the "CO-WY ASA Best Student Presentation Award." This will be a traveling award with "bragging rights" going to the school that produces the best presentation. The award will be engraved with the winning student’s name and also his/her advisor’s name. The announcement of other awards received by CO-WY ASA members will also be appropriate. Just let the program chair know about any awards that you would like announced and we will be happy to do it.

The CO-WY ASA Chapter will be sponsoring a conference on teaching statistics. The goals of the conference are to improve the art of teaching statistics by the sharing of: 1) Creative and innovative methods for teaching statistics. 2) Wisdom gained from past experiences of teaching statistics. 3) A good time that builds camaraderie among colleagues. The conference will follow the spring meeting on 27 March at 1:30 PM. The conference will run through 28 March 1998 and cost $190 (includes 3 meals). If you have any questions concerning the teachers’ conference, feel free to contact Brad Warner at (719) 333-2981 (WarnerBA.DFMS@USAFA.AF.MIL), or Jim Rutledge at (719) 333-4470 (RutledgeJH.DFMS@USAFA.AF.MIL).

**************************** BALLOT ***********************************

____ YES (I vote to change the charter)

____ NO (I vote to NOT change the charter)

Please mail your ballot by March 15, 1998 to:

HQ USAFA/DAMS

ATTN: Brad Warner, ASA Ballot Committee Chairman

2354 Fairchild Drive, Suite 6D2A

USAF Academy, CO. 80840-6252

**************************** BALLOT ***********************************

Awards are available for outstanding statistics majors from schools in the chapter area in honor of Maurice Davies, a founder of the chapter. One undergraduate or graduate student from a school may receive an award. The award carries with it a one-year student membership in the American Statistical Association. If a department desires to present such an award, please send the chapter president the name of the student by March 15, 1998. It is the responsibility of the awarding department to inform the student that they have been selected and invite them to be our guest at the spring meeting in Colorado Springs. A member of the department should accompany the student to the meeting and introduce them during the award presentation. It is not necessary for a student to attend the meeting; the award can be mailed to them.

In support of ASA's goal to become involved with secondary education, the CO-WY Chapter has appointed several high school liaisons. Thank you to Jim zumBrunnen and Rick Edgeman who have volunteered to be the ASA liaisons to Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins. In addition, we

thank Jim Murphy and Doug Curran-Everett who have volunteered to be the ASA liaisons to Cherry Creek High School in Denver. If anybody else is interested in helping or knows of a school in need of an ASA liaison, please contact a chapter officer.

Future issues of the newsletter will report on the progress of these programs.

Nominations for the officer positions of secretary and president-elect are being accepted. If you or somebody you know is interested, please contact one of the chapter officers. The term of office for President-Elect is one year, with the understanding that you will be the President the following year. The usual term of office for the Secretary is two years. Being an officer in the chapter is a great way to meet new people and promote the statistical profession.

If you should ever have any questions about chapter activities, feel free to contact Jim Rutledge, the chapter president, at (719)333-4470 / RutledgeJH.DFMS@USAFA.AF.MIL   For the latest chapter

information you can visit our web site at: http://www.stat.colostate.edu/ASA/.

Being new to a profession and an area (and the local chapter) has some advantages. It has been fascinating to learn where our members work and what they do. Yet in the few months I have been active in the local chapter, I suspect that I have just scratched the surface. With that in mind, I have started to solicit input from our members with regard to their activities. Using a surveying method which could best be described as erratic, an E-mail questionnaire was sent to some members. I am grateful to those who have responded.

The first target of my survey was a fellow Ball employee who works across the parking lot from my lab. I thought that his proximity would allow threats of physical violence seem real enough that I would be ensured at least one response. However, he travels so much that his response was E-mailed from Tampa, Florida.

Jim Knappmiller works for Ball Packaging Operations where he is a member of the Continuous Pursuit of Excellence department. Ball Packaging Operations manufactures metal beverage and food cans as well as plastic beverage bottles. Jim provides statistical support for Ball Aerospace as well as Ball’s Packaging Operations in the United States and Canada. Jim’s main duties involve the introduction of SPC to the plants and statistical problem solving. He teaches courses on basic and advanced SPC techniques, gage capability and design of experiments.

Tampa is close compared to the next submission which came all the way from Thailand.

Darl Bien of the University of Denver reports that he is finishing up another month of work with the Thai Red Cross Program on AIDS. This is his fifth consecutive December working in Thailand on some aspect of the AIDS problem. The ethical issues of placebo trials in developing countries are of great concern there right now. So he has been working on a cost-benefit analysis of a screening and treatment program to reduce the probability of transmission of HIV from mother to infant. It is an exciting project and might have immediate impact as the Ministry of Public Health is currently debating whether to provide this type of program to all pregnant women. This is the standard of care in the U.S., for example, but has not been shown to be cost-saving in poorer countries.

The last response actually came from the local area.

Stephen C. Bell works for The Lockheed Martin Corp., Astronautics Group, Denver, CO. At his site, Lockheed Martin builds, assembles, and performs the systems integration for the Titan and Atlas launch vehicles, along with the Centaur upper stage, and other smaller launch vehicles. The company is also in a business arrangement with the Russian company that manufactures the Proton launch vehicle to be supplied for the international commercial launch vehicle arena.

The latest program Stephen worked on was the Cassini mission to Saturn. The statistical work he did was to formulate and implement the mathematical reliability models (via large Monte Carlo simulations) that were used to predict the probability that the Titan IV launch vehicle would undergo a catastrophic failure, resulting in potential damage to the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) that the Cassini spacecraft carried for power generation. The RTGs contained radioactive material, and there was

much concern, both within the space community and the general public at large, about the likelihood of a launch vehicle failure. The results were supplied to the Dept. of Energy, whose subcontractors used them to predict the overall risk to the overall population. The overall risks were predicted to be very small, and were provided in a report to the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, which issued a recommendation for launch. The President and Vice President both concurred, and the Cassini launch was given Presidential approval. In October 1997, the Cassini spacecraft was successfully launched by a Titan IV/Centaur launch vehicle towards its historic encounter with the planet Saturn.

Stephen reports that the above was a somewhat special-case type of reliability analysis, and his usual analysis tasks are to evaluate how accurately the Lockheed Martin fleet of launch vehicles and their upper stages will place their payloads into orbit. He adds that it has been quite a challenge to work as a functioning statistician within a large engineering environment.

We receive far too many position notices to reprint them in the newsletter. It will be the newsletter’s policy to give preference to those postings which are local, most current, or most longstanding. This will also be done on a space-available basis. A comprehensive list is maintained on the Website. Members who want up-to-date information are urged to consult the Website. Postings often appear there within an hour of our receiving them. I have subscribed to the Survey Section’s net which has been a source of most of the postings. If the postings appear to have a bias towards that specialty, that is the explanation. Jim is looking into other linkages which will bring us more listings. Please contact me (Jack Powers) or Jim zumBrunnen with suggestions for other sources.

Our past newsletter editor, Tim Coburn, continues to forward postings to us. Many thanks Tim.

Biostatistician wanted to work on the design and analysis of clinical trials in allergy, immunology and respiratory medicine at the leading institutions of its kind in the world. This position requires a masters degree in biostatistics, 3-5 years experience in applied biostatistics, and excellent verbal and written communication skills. Applicants must have strong computing skills on multiple operating systems (MacOs, Windows and UNIX) and be proficient in longitudinal data analysis using SAS. Contact David Ikle, Ph.D., Chief, Biostatistics, National Jewish Medical and Research Center, 1400 Jackson St., Denver CO 80206. (303-398-1861 or ikled@njc.org)

Hewlett-Packard Greeley Hardcopy Division is seeking an experienced S+ applications programmer and statistician for a position in its supplier quality department. The successful candidate will have an MS in statistics or equivalent, strong S+ skills, experience with multivariate analysis, some Visual C++ experience, and exposure to measurement systems analysis. Please contact Doug Mader at (970) 350-4074 or submit a resume directly at (970) 350-5427 fax

The U.S. General Accounting Office, an independent research, evaluation and audit arm of Congress, has an "open continuous announcement" for the positions of Mathematician, Math Statistician, Statistician, and Operations Research Analyst.

A little more information is available at www.gao.gov. Follow the links to "Job Vacancies at GAO" and announcement OR-800-98.

Periodic vacancies are anticipated. After applications are received, certified candidates are put on a list from which they might be selected for an interview at any time. Informal conversations about the nature of the positions prior to application are also possible: if you think you might be interested, call or e-mail Carl Ramirez and he can put you in touch with a manager in his unit, for starters.

**********************************************

Carl Ramirez

Senior Social Science Analyst

U.S. General Accounting Office

441 G St., NW, Room 2921

Washington, DC 20548

phone: (202) 512-3721

e-mail: ramirezc.ggd@gao.gov

**********************************************

The opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent official policy of GAO.

As with the job postings, there is not enough room in the newsletter to reproduce calls for papers in their entirety. A new category for calls for papers has been added to the website and the complete notices can be found there.

The ACR 1998 annual conference will be in Montreal from October 1 to October 4, 1998. The deadline for paper submission is March 15, 1998. The one exception to this is submissions for the roundtable which is June 15, 1998. The theme of this year’s conference is "Dialogue, Difference and Delight". Very detailed information is available on the local chapter website or directly from the ACR: http://www.stat.colostate.edu/ASA/Call/acr.html

http://www.acr-news.org/CP98.html

A special issue on parallel processing and statistics is being planned by the above journal. The submission deadline is September 1, 1998. More information on the proposed issue can be found at http://www.stat.unipg.it/iasc/Misc-stat-jorn-CSDA.html or through the editor at the E-mail address:

erricos.kontoghiorghes@info.unine.ch

The last edition of the newsletter announced a contest asking if anyone could identify the oldest professional society in the United States. The American Statistical Association is the second oldest but we have not been able to identify the oldest. Since the prize was a free lunch at the Spring Meeting, the contest will end at that time.

The Summer Institute will offer graduate-level courses in two consecutive four-week sessions, June 1 - June 26 and June 29 - July 24, 1998. Courses will be offered for graduate credit in eight-, four-, two-, and one-week formats. Course topics include an introduction to survey research, questionnaire design, cognition and survey measurement, survey data collection methods, sampling methods, analysis of survey data, computer analysis of survey data, and analysis of event history data.

The Summer Institute will also include an eight-week program for those interested in an in-depth study of sampling methods. The Sampling Program for Survey Statisticians (SPSS), is being offered for the 34th time in this summer. It combines university classes with practical application in

research methods and office practice.

Course and instructor descriptions are available on the Summer Institute web page at http://www.isr.umich.edu/src/si/.

To receive a copy of the Summer Institute brochure containing application materials, send an email message to summers@isr.umich.edu. Or contact James M. Lepkowski, Director of the Summer Institute, Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248; phone (734)764-6595; fax (734) 764-8263.