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Editor's Note: It's cold outside, but the ASA is on FIRE with tons of activity in the next 8 weeks. Don't hibernate - get active!
The CCASA wishes you a powerful start to the New Year!
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January Luncheon |
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Luncheon Announcement
Noon to 1:30PM
TUESDAY, January 26, 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 January speaker is Lisa Amoroso, Ph.D., Kellogg/Northwestern University. The 2010 edition of the popular text, Constructing Social Research 2/e (Ragin and Amoroso, Pine Forge Press), emphasizes the various ethical dilemmas faced by social scientists during the research process. Lisa's talk, "Ethics in an Infoglut World," will consider how ethical dilemmas can be complicated by the ease of obtaining and analyzing massive amounts of data on all aspects of individuals' lives (including behaviors, personalities, physical and mental wellbeing, opinions, values, and on and on). Commercial enterprises, interested in harnessing this information to develop better products or services and higher profits, need to deal with privacy issues (or to factor in the costs of litigation) but they do not give much consideration to the ethical issues involved with research on human subjects - consideration that professional ethics standards require of social scientists.
Lisa attended Northwestern University for her B.A. in economics and mathematical methods in the social sciences. She then spent five years working in systems consulting (Accenture/Mercer), before returning to Northwestern and the Kellogg School of Management to complete her Ph.D. in a joint program in sociology and organization behavior in 2003. In 2005, she joined the faculty of the Heller College of Business Administration at Roosevelt University where she currently teaches quantitative analysis, negotiations, and other management courses.
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 LucileDerrick 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, January 29th, 2010.
Register online at https://www.123 signup.com/servlet/SignUpMember? PG=1531573182300&P=153157300.
Mark Your Calendars! The February luncheon will be held on February 23rd, and the speaker will be Kwang-Youn Kim. Kwang-Youn will present a talk on Variations in the Genome. Plan to join your CCASA friends in February!
Questions: Contact Borko Jovanovic, CCASA VP Luncheons, Phone: 312-503-2008 or E-mail: borko@northwestern.edu
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2010 CCASA Social Media Conference and Career Fair |
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When: February 5, 2010
Where: Rush University
Join us for a half or full-day - don't miss out!
The Statistics Career Fair
Need a little career advice or resume boost? Don't miss our Career Fair. No appointment necessary - the walk-in format invites you to come as early or late as your schedule permits. Meet with representatives from sponsoring corporations to discuss how statisticians fit into their organizations and review your resume. Career specialists will also host "break out tables" to consult with small groups or individuals on:
-How to put together a resume
-Technical requirements for statisticians in the work world
-Using job boards and social networking in a job search
-Real world applications for the business statistician
-Salary ranges
The Social Media Conference:
Creating Insights from the Conversations
The use of social media in our society is becoming more and more ubiquitous and provides opportunities to leverage the content and conversations present to drive research, inform decision-making, and evaluate outcomes. Our conference presenters provide multiple examples of the usefulness of social media in a variety of fields.
Conference Program
11:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Buffet Lunch
12:00 p.m. - 12:30 p.m. Conference Welcome by John VanderPloeg, Conference VP
12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. Session One: Understanding the Scope and Impact of Social Media, presented by Melinda Cultra (Research Director, Leo Burnett USA)
1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. Session Two: Insights from Facebook Interaction, presented by Brad Keown (Facebook)
2:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m. Afternoon break
2:45 p.m. - 3:45 p.m. Session Three: Social Media's Impact on Brand Decision Making, presented by Thomas Malkin (President, GeeYee Corporation)
3:45 p.m. - 4:45 p.m. Session Four: Social Media's Impact on Website Satisfaction & Behavior, presented by Eric Head (Director of Business Development, ForeSee Corporation)
4:45 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Question and Answer Session
Costs
Career Fair Only:
CCASA Members: FREE!
Non-members: $15 (includes CCASA Membership)
Student Non-members: $6 (includes CCASA Membership)
Lunch and Social Media Conference:
CCASA Members: $85
Student Members: $40
Non-Members: $110
Student Non-members: $46
For directions and to register online, go to http://chicagoasa.org/Workshops/e020510.htm
Questions: E-mail co-chairs Linda Burtch (lburtch@burtchworks.com) or John VanderPloeg (john.vanderploeg@arcww.com).
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Workshop: Knowledge Discovery with Support Vector Machines
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CCASA is proud to sponsor this exciting spring workshop!
When: Friday, March 26, 2010
8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Where: Gleacher Center
450 North Cityfront Plaza Drive
Chicago, IL 60611-4316
312-464-8787
Support vector machines (SVMs) have established themselves as one of the preeminent machine learning/statistical models for classification and regression over the past decade or so, frequently outperforming artificial neural networks in tasks such as text mining and bioinformatics. The aim of this workshop is to give you an understanding on what is going on "under the hood" when using SVMs. After completing this workshop, you will be able to interpret the performance of SVM models and make appropriate choices for model parameters during the model evaluation and selection cycle. You will understand the difference between linear, polynomial, and gaussian kernels and know how to tune their parameters. In addition, you will have a deep understanding on how the cost constant "C" affects the quality of your models. The workshop is based on the R statistical computing environment and will draw on material from the book Knowledge Discovery with Support Vector Machines (Wiley, 2009).
For more information and to register, go to http://www.chicagoasa.org/Workshops/e032610. htm
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Article: How Much Digital Data Is TOO Much? |
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Here's an excerpt from an interesting New York Times article debating whether students are being prepared for massive data.
Training to Climb an Everest of Digital Data
by Ashlee Vance
It is a rare criticism of elite American university students that they do not think big enough. But that is exactly the complaint from some of the largest technology companies and the federal government.
At the heart of this criticism is data. Researchers and workers in fields as diverse as bio-technology, astronomy and computer science will soon find themselves overwhelmed with information. Better telescopes and genome sequencers are as much to blame for this data glut as are faster computers and bigger hard drives.
While consumers are just starting to comprehend the idea of buying external hard drives for the home capable of storing a terabyte of data, computer scientists need to grapple with data sets thousands of times as large and growing ever larger. (A single terabyte equals 1,000 gigabytes and could store about 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica.)
For the entire article, click here.
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Editor |
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**PLEASE NOTE EDITOR'S NEW CONTACT INFORMATION**
Editor: Linda Burtch (847) 440-8560
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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