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The CCASA wishes you a joyful holiday season!
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December Luncheon |
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Luncheon Announcement
Noon to 1:30PM
TUESDAY, December 8, 2009
The East Bank Club, 500 N. Kingsbury, Chicago 60610
Please join us for another exciting talk in the CCASA's 2009-2010 Luncheon program!
Our December speaker is Albert Madansky.
Al Madansky is a Vice President and co- founder of The Analytical Group, Inc. Al's remarkable career encompasses both academic and corporate worlds. He received his PhD in Statistics from the University of Chicago , and went on to hold the position of Professor and Deputy Dean for the University of Chicago.
Al also held senior management positions in the corporate world, including Vice President at Interpublic Group and President of Dataplan. He is widely published, having written articles and books on such topics as Conjoint Analysis, Quantal Choice Models, New Methods of Telephone Interviewing and has also been published in The Financial Analysts Journal.
Al will be discussing How To Read A Business Book!
Plans for our future luncheons will be included in our upcoming announcements and in the Parameter. Lunch is $30 for CCASA members, $35 for non-members. Non-members, join the chapter for a year for only $15 and get the discount plus all of the other benefits of membership! As usual, the Lucile 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 Gerald Funk, expressing your interest. Please register for the luncheon by Friday, December 4th, 2009.
Register online at https://www.123 signup.com/servlet/SignUpMember? PG=1531573182300&P=153157300.
Mark Your Calendars! The January luncheon will be held on January 26th, and the speaker will be Lisa Amoroso. Lisa will present a talk on Ethics in an Infoglut World. Plan to join your CCASA friends in January!
Questions: Contact Borko Jovanovic, CCASA VP Luncheons, Phone: 312-503-2008 or E-mail: borko@northwestern.edu
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CORRECTION to November Parameter |
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Our sincerest apologies for omitting a valued member from the CCASA Executive Board listing. His information is below:
VP Conferences, Byron Bell
Columbia College
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Chess, Anyone? |
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At the recent Chicago ASA Board meeting, the topic of chess came up. Our ever-entertaining leader, Lou Fogg, informed us that at one point, briefly, he had a rating of over 2200 and so was a chess master. As for me, I have been a victim of scholar's mate by a six year old more than once. This topic morphed into an interesting discussion about Arpad Elo the creator of the Elo rating system. This is the system that the World Chess Federation adopted in 1970 to rate chess players based on statistical estimation. For those interested, Wikipedia has an interesting summary of the theory and mathematical details.
Thanks, Lou, for your interesting content contribution to this month's Parameter. Anyone think that a CCASA chess tournament would be an interesting event? Let us know! -Linda
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Holy Random Sample, Readers! |
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From the Editor |
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Kicking SAS?
Not if James Goodnight, statistician and CEO of the SAS Institute, has any say in the matter. Recently the New York Times reported that the venerable software giant that created the statistical tool of choice for countless business statisticians for over three decades is under siege. New competition is threatening SAS's longstanding, comfortable position as the undisputed leader in business intelligence software.
This summer, IBM took a serious step into the business intelligence realm with their purchase of SPSS and Cognos. In a direct threat to the SAS reign, it has been widely reported that IBM intends to build a 4,000-person-strong business analytics and optimization group to provide global business support.
As the industry leader, SAS has not, up to this point, had to be concerned. In fact, SAS resisted integrating with the open programming environments and information transparency that has now turned their legacy world upside down. Free, open source coding, such as R, has been quickly adopted by academic institutions and labs, and SAS was slow to recognize the importance of this shift. Within a few short years, many graduating statisticians will be using R in the workplace, potentially usurping SAS's domination.
But SAS founder Goodnight is on the move. According to senior VP and chief technology officer Keith Collins, SAS has seen the error of it's closed-minded ways and is committed to engaging with the open source community. SAS has other strong assets that could help it maintain its dominant position in the market, including a loyal workforce with a turnover rate of just four percent. The company has worked hard to earn its reputation as a low-stress, family friendly workplace. Even despite recently reducing software development time from 24 to 36 months to 12 to 18 months, you would still be hard pressed to find an employee who has worked a 60- hour week more than two weeks in a row.
It will be interesting to see how the new strategies at SAS and the aggressive actions of its competitors will affect the rapidly expanding world of business analytics. Like Thanksgiving feasts on tables across the country last week, data and information have become the bounty of the business world. Businesses need flexible, agile tools to help them digest it all in ways that will keep them healthy and growing. To complicate matters further, static information of old - such sales and operations data - needs to be combined with new, dynamic sources of information, such as social networking buzz, Web behavior and now easily accessible public records. Nervous yet, Mr. Goodnight?
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Editor |
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**PLEASE NOTE EDITOR'S NEW CONTACT INFORMATION**
Editor: Linda Burtch (847) 328-6902
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@burtchworks.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: smileyr@georgetown.edu
To view this Edition of the Parameter through your web browser, visit:
http://archive. c onstantcontact.com/fs080/1101367397804/archive/11 02761467528.html
©CCASA 2009
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