IASS News December 2020

December 2020 Newsletter: International Association of Survey Statisticians

In this newsletter we let you know about three invited session proposals for the World Statistics Conference that are supported by the IASS and list upcoming conferences.

Links to more information:

  • The July 2020 issue of The Survey Statistician (TSS) is available. The TSS is an open access journal. If you would like to contribute an article to the Ask the Experts, New and Emerging Methods, and Book and Software Review sections please approach the editors or James Chipperfield (email below)
  • 2020 Newsletters are available
  • The calendar of events is available
  • IASS Twitter account @iass_isi

The IASS Executive Committee encourage members to subscribe and contribute articles to the Statistics Journal of the International Association of Official Statistics. Website: https://officialstatistics.com/aims-scope .

Please feel free to send items to publish in future IASS newsletters to James Chipperfield james.chipperfield@abs.gov.au  

World Statistics Conference – Invited Session Proposals

If you are an IASS member and have submitted an ISP, please let me and Monica Pratesi (monica.pratesi@unipi.it) know. We are trying to keep track of them. The IASS EC has assisted the UNSD Inter-secretariat Working Group on Household Surveys on their ISP submission called Big Data for Official Statistics – Tips, Tricks and Techniques. I am aware of three ISPs for the WSC 2021 that are supported by the IASS. For your interest the session’s titles and contributors are listed below:

Women in survey sampling research and practice: The proposed session is inspired by the celebrations of the ISI for the International Year of Women in Statistics and Data Science.  The session would like to give to women engaged in survey statistics in different parts of the world a dedicated showcase for their high-level research and practice. Three women have accepted to give a presentation at this session, on different topics concerning survey sampling: Frauke Kreuter (University of Maryland, USA), Claudia Rivera Rodriguez (University of Auckland, New Zealand), and Anne Ruiz-Gazen (University of Toulouse 1, France). The broad diversity of topics addressed by the speakers (as their research interests provided below show) underline their contribution to a domain where women remain underrepresented around the world.
 
Counting People with Administrative Data instead of a Traditional Census: The count of people or households in a nation, by basic demographic and geographic characteristics, are foundational statistics that support a nation’s key decisions. These counts are often estimated by National Statistical Institutes (NSI) by conducting a traditional population Census- while these counts are of high quality, they are very costly owing to the need for a large workforce to, for example, collect data directly from households. In contrast, administrative data are relatively inexpensive to collect and often contain basic demographic and geographic characteristics. The key problem with counting a population using administrative data is that they not cover all people in a nation (under-coverage) and some administrative records belong to people who no longer reside in the nation (over-coverage). This invited session has speakers from the NSIs of Israel, United Kingdom, and Italy who will discuss alternative frameworks to address this problem and will present recent results.

The Evolution of the 21st Century Census: Census statistics are the foundation of a nation’s decision-making. In many countries, censuses are evolving towards increasing reliance on administrative data. The cycle of population censuses remains a core activity of National Statistics Institutes (NSI) and this session will focus on the role of NSI’s research in census evolution into the future and highlight the associated statistical challenges. This session will also include reflections on how the Cov-19 pandemic has influenced the path of this evolution.

Conferences

Upcoming IASS-Supported Conferences

ICES VI – The International Conference on Establishment Statistics will take place 14-17 June 2021 in New Orleans, U.S. Website: https://ww2.amstat.org/meetings/ices/2020/conferenceinfo.cfm/   

SAE2021- BigSmall – Conference on Small Area Estimation, with the theme “Big Data for Small Areas”, will be held 5-7 July in Naples, Italy, as a satellite conference to the World Statistics Conference in 2021. Website: https://sae2020.org/ 

Summer School on Survey Statistics 2020 was planned to be held 24–28 August in Minsk, Belarus but it has been postponed to 2021. Details to be announced. Website: https://wiki.helsinki.fi/display/BNU/Events.

11e Colloque International Francophone sur les Sondages – 11th International Francophone Conference on Surveys will take place 6-8 October 2021 in Brussels, Belgium. Website: http://sondages2020.sciencesconf.org.

Other Conferences on survey statistics and related areas

BigSurv20 – Big Data Meets Survey Science will be held virtually during November and December. Website: https://www.bigsurv20.org

American Statistical Association Conference on Statistical Practice is planned to take place 18-20 February 2021 in Nashville, USA. Website: https://ww2.amstat.org/meetings/csp/2020/index.cfm

Statistics in the Big Data Era will take place 2 – 4 June 2021 in Berkeley, USA. Website: https://simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/statistics-big-data-era

Symposium on Data Science & Statistics is planned to take placeJune 2-5, 2021 in Missouri, USA–. Website: https://ww2.amstat.org/meetings/sdss/2021/ 

ANZSC 2021 – Australian Statistical Society and New Zealand Statistical Association Conference will take place 5 – 9 July 5, Gold Coast, Australia.  Website: https://anzsc2021.com.au/

Conference and Special Issue of Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A in memory of Fred Smith and Chris Skinner will be held in Southampton, UK, 8‐10 July 2021. See the August 2020 IASS Newsletter for full details.

63rd ISI World Statistics Congress will take place 11-16 July 2021 and will be virtual.  Website: https://www.isi2021.org/

Joint Statistical Meetings 2021 will take place 7 -12 August in Seattle, USA. Website: https://www.amstat.org/ASA/Meetings/Joint-Statistical-Meetings.aspx

2021 Women in Statistics and Data Science Conference will take place 7-9 October in Pittsburgh, USA. Website: https://ww2.amstat.org/meetings/wsds/2021/

The Survey Research Methods Section (SRMS) of the ASA Information on activities of the Survey Research Methods Section of the American Statistical Association (ASA) are available at: https://community.amstat.org/surveyresearchmethodssection/home