Colorado-Wyoming Chapter

Volume 30, Number 2 Newsletter September 1, 1998

University of Colorado at Denver 4:30 - 5:00 p.m. Social time

1250 14th Street (1/2 block from Larimer Square) 5:00 - 6:00 p.m. Presentation

Denver, Colorado 6:30 - ?:?? p.m. Informal dinner

Room 626

Dr. Edgeman is the co-director of the Center for Quality & Productivity Improvement at Colorado State University. He spent the last year teaching in the European Masters Program in Total Quality Management at the Aarhus School of Business in Denmark. He was able to visit with a number of quality and reliability engineering professionals throughout Europe. He will speak about his experiences.

The Spring meeting is scheduled for April 9. We are pleased to announce that Dr. Trevor Hastie of Stanford University has agreed to be the keynote speaker. Dr. Hastie has written many books and articles on the topics of modern regression and classification methods, including topics such as Generalized Additive Models, Flexible Discriminant Analysis, and Adaptive Discriminant Nearest Neighbors.

The meeting is tentatively scheduled for Boulder at a site to be named.

The spring meeting will be an all day affair with a student paper competition as well as contributed paper presentations. We hope that area faculty will encourage students to participate. Preparing a paper will be a valuable experience for a student.

Those wishing to enter should submit a one or two paragraph abstract by March 1st to:

Brad Warner

HQ USAFA/DFMS

2354 Fairchild Dr., Suite 6D2A

USAF Academy, CO 80840-6252

Lyman L. McDonald, president and senior biometrician at WEST, was recently named Fellow of the American Statistical Association for the development and application of statistical methods in fish and wildlife biology and ecology. The local chapter extends its congratulations to Lyman.

This year's Maurice Davies awards have gone to Chris Nations (University of Wyoming) and Ronald Wright (Colorado State University). This award recognizes outstanding students of statistics from the Colorado-Wyoming region. Congratulations to both Chris and Ronald!

Jason Vinson from the Air Force Academy won an all expenses paid trip to the ASA meeting in Dallas for his entry in the 3rd Annual Undergraduate Data Analysis Contest. His entry was in the top 5 of all entries from across the United States. Jason traveled to Dallas to compete in the oral presentation phase of the competition. The chapter congratulates Jason.

As reported in the last newsletter, the chapter has established a liaison with Cherry Creek High School in the Denver area and Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins. Jim Murphy and Doug Curran-Everett are the liaisons with Cherry Creek and Jim zumBrunnen and Rick Edgeman are the liaisons at Rocky Mountain. Among other items of information our liaisons discovered was that the college boards have added an AP statistics test to their battery for the first time last year. There were 7000 high school students across the nation who took this test the first time it was offered.

The two teachers at Cherry Creek, Jim Luhring and Dave Price, teach full semester statistics courses to high school seniors. These courses were new last year. A course on statistics has been offered at Rocky Mountain for several years. Dick Zubradt teaches the course at Rocky Mountain.

The local chapter has supplied some resource materials to the teachers. A number of members indicated an interest in assisting the high schools, and a speakers bureau for giving high school classes or teacher in-service is being considered.

Gigi Williams from the Air Force Academy has decided to run ASA's next undergraduate data analysis contest. This is a contest that students from across the nation can compete in. If you are interested in helping out on this project, please contact her at WilliamsJG.dfms@usafa.af.mil.

Please note that she would welcome help from both academia and industry.

The chapter is pleased to announce that Joan Baron Kopp received the Chapter Service Award. Joan has faithfully served as the chapter secretary for the past two years. In a chapter with over 200 members she has earned this distinguished award.

Brad Warner (see profile below) from the United States Air Force Academy has been elected to the position of President Elect. Stepping up to President will be William Navidi from the Colorado School of Mines. Also, Wallace Erickson (see profile below) from WEST Inc. has been elected to the position of Secretary. Wally will be replacing Joan Baron Kopp, who has done an outstanding job for the chapter. The chapter also voted to change the charter to include the office of Webmaster. The chapter Webmaster is Jim zumBrunnen from Colorado State University.

In March, the chapter hosted the Western Statistics Teachers’ Conference. This conference was a huge success. Participants came from as far away as Australia and Japan. Presenters from the local area included: Steven Janke (Colorado College), Mark Kiemele (invited speaker from Air Academy Associates), Larry Lesser (invited speaker from the University of Northern Colorado), and James Murphy (University of Colorado Health Sciences Center). A special thanks goes out to the conference organizers: Jim Rutledge, Jim Simpson, John Tomick, Brad Warner, and Tim Webb from the Air Force Academy.

Out past president, Major Jim Rutledge, has retired from the Air Force and has moved to the Dayton, Ohio area. Jim did an excellent job serving the chapter in his capacity as president. He will be missed and we wish him the best of luck in his new endeavors.

The winter meeting is tentatively scheduled for mid-January. The exact date, speaker and location will be announced in the next issue of the chapter newsletter. The chapter web page will post this information as soon as it becomes available.

If you should ever have any questions about chapter activities, feel free to contact Bill Navidi, the chapter president. For the latest chapter information you can visit our web site at: http://www.stat.colostate.edu/ASA/

This issue of the newsletter will profile our new officers.