April

April

Newsletter of the Chicago Chapter of the American Statistical Association )
Volume 60 Number 8 April 2012

IN THIS ISSUE
  • May 4, 2012- Conference: America the Predictable?
  • April 24, 2012- Luncheon: Loss Modeling of Corporate Bonds; Foundations and Practice
  • April 21-22 2012- Undergraduate Data Analytics Competition
  • Mathematicians Are Helping Usain Bolt Break Records
  • Do you know who your friends are? Statisticians do.
  • ASA Members, don't forget to vote in the ASA 2012 Elections!
  • Adam,

    Spring is almost here in Chicago. The weather is getting warmer and flowers are starting to bloom.

    spring

    May 4, 2012- Conference: America the Predictable?

    With the election season heating up, there's no better time to explore the role of statistics in our nation's politics. Join the Chicago chapter of the American Statistical Association on Friday, May 4th at Loyola University's Downtown Water Tower Campus for America the Predictable? and learn more about the factors that play into presidential campaigns and the ways that social media and political attack ads affect the results of our political elections.

    Featured speakers include: Forrest Nelson, one of the founders of the Iowa Electronic Market; and Allan Lichtman, professor at American University and author of the "13 keys" that have successfully predicted every presidential election winner since 1984.

    Register:

    America the Predictable?

    Different approaches to understanding and forecasting political election results.

    Conference presented by the Chicago Chapter of the American Statistical Association

    Date: Friday, May 4, 2012

    Time: 9:00am - 5:00pm

    Location: Loyola University, Downtown Water Tower Campus (Kasbeer Hall)

    25 East Pearson, Chicago, IL

    Conference Program

    9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. Registration and continental breakfast

    9:30 a.m. - 9:45 a.m. Conference Welcome by John VanderPloeg, Conference VP

    9:45 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. Session One Speaker: David W. Moore

    (Senior Fellow, The Carsey Institute, University of New Hampshire)

    Topic: Issues With Polling Entities

    10:45 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. Morning break

    11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Session Two Speaker: John G. Geer

    (Professor of Political Science, Vanderbilt University)

    Topic: Political Attack Advertising

    12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Lunch

    1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Session Three Speaker: Allan Lichtman

    (Distinguished Professor of History, American University)

    Title: The Keys to the White House: Forecast for 2012

    2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. Session Four Speaker: Forrest Nelson

    (Professor, University of Iowa)

    Title: Iowa Electronic Markets - 2012 Presidential Elections

    3:00 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Afternoon break

    3:15 p.m. - 4:15 p.m. Session Five Speaker : Filippo Menczer

    (Professor of Informatics and Computer Science, Indiana University)

    Title: Tracking the Diffusion of Political Ideas in Social Media

    Speaker Detail:

    Speaker: John G. Geer (Professor of Political Science, Vanderbilt University)

    Topic: Political Attack Advertising

    Learn More:

    John G. Geer (PhD, Princeton University) is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He has been a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University and a research fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. Geer is the former editor of The Journal of Politics. He has published numerous articles and several books, including In Defense of Negativity (2006), which won the Goldsmith Book prize from Harvard University in 2008. He has provided extensive commentary in the news media on politics, including live nation-wide interviews for FOX, CNN, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, ABC, and NPR. Geer has also written op-ed pieces for Politico, The Washington Post, LA Times, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. His lecturing has earned him a number of awards at Vanderbilt, including the "Squirrel Award." In 2005, he won The College of Arts and Sciences' Jeffrey Nordhaus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. In 2009, he won Vanderbilt University's Ellen Gregg Ingalls Award for Excellence in Classroom Teaching.

    Speaker: Allan Lichtman (Distinguished Professor of History, American University)

    Title: The Keys to the White House: Forecast for 2012

    Learn more:

    Allan J. Lichtman received his PhD from Harvard University in 1973 with a specialty in modern American history and quantitative methods. He became an Assistant Professor of History at American University in 1973 and a Full Professor in 1980. He was the recipient of the Scholar/Teacher of the year award for 1992-93. He has published seven books and several hundred popular and scholarly articles. He has lectured in the US and internationally and provided commentary for major US and foreign networks and leading newspapers and magazines across the world. He has been an expert witness in more than 75 civil and voting rights cases. His book, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction. His prediction system, the Keys to the White House, has correctly predicted the outcomes of all US presidential elections since 1984.

    Speaker: Forrest Nelson (Professor, University of Iowa)

    Title: Iowa Electronic Markets - 2012 Presidential Election

    Learn more:

    Forrest Nelson is a Professor of Economics and Tippie Research Fellow at the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business. His fields of interest include Econometrics and Prediction Markets. He was one of three founders in 1988 of the Iowa Electronic Market, the pioneer of all prediction markets, and has been involved with the extension of these markets to health issues since 2003. Previous positions include Assistant Professor at California Institute of Technology and visiting Professor, Aarhus University, Denmark.

    Speaker: Filippo Menczer (Professor of Informatics and Computer Science, Indiana University)

    Title: Tracking the Diffusion of Political Ideas in Social Media

    Learn more:

    Filippo Menczer is a professor of informatics and computer science, adjunct professor of physics, and a member of the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington. He holds a Laurea in Physics from the University of Rome and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Menczer has been the recipient of Fulbright, Rotary Foundation, and NATO fellowships, and a Career Award from the National Science Foundation. He currently serves as director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research. He previously served as division chair in the IUB School of Informatics and Computing, as Fellow-at-large of the Santa Fe Institute, and as Lagrange Senior Fellow at the Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation in Torino, Italy. His research is supported by the NSF and McDonnell Foundation, and focuses on Web science, social networks, social media, social computation, Web mining, distributed and intelligent Web applications, and modeling of complex information networks.

    Fee and Registration

    Member $175

    Non-Member $225

    Student $95

    Register:

    April 24, 2012- Luncheon: Loss Modeling of Corporate Bonds; Foundations and Practice
    Luncheon Program Logo







    Noon - 1:30 PM
    The East Bank Club
    500 N. Kingsbury, Chicago 60610

    Abstract:

    Mr. Zamora will provide an introduction to "Bond Basics", including an outline of the elements of risk associated with these instruments. The outline will briefly describe agency credit ratings and associated transition matrices, the location of bonds within corporate capital structure, and important concepts like duration and convexity.

    He will then introduce the modeling options available to evaluate the default and credit risk of a portfolio of corporate bonds and speak to some widely accepted methods in the industry. In the discussion of modeling approaches Mr. Zamora will discuss some practical considerations in the evaluation of default probabilities, modeling of losses given default, and the important issue of default correlation. He will also explore transition risk and its impact on portfolio valuation and the pro-cyclical nature of defaults as they relate to the construction of analytic scenarios.

    Speaker biography:

    Nelson A. Zamora, CFA has been with PPM America since 2003, and is currently Senior Managing Director and Head of Quantitative Research & Risk Management. Nelson has over 25 years' experience in the asset management industry, with asset class knowledge in fixed income and equities. Prior to joining PPM America, Mr. Zamora was with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers for over 15 years and held the position of Managing Director, Head of Fixed Income Applied Research. In this position he had oversight of over $120 billion in fixed income assets. Nelson earned his Masters in Financial Mathematics from the University of Chicago, and received his B.S.C from Rider University with a double major in Decision Sciences and Finance. Nelson has the earned the designation of Charted Financial Analyst (CFA).

    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 Mark Richards, expressing your interest 630-415-9547 or mrichards@iso.com

    Questions: Call Mark Richards at 630-415-9547 for more information

    Please register for the luncheon by Friday April 20, 2012.

    April 21-22 2012- Undergraduate Data Analytics Competition


    The ASA is proud to announce the first annual Midwest Undergraduate Data Analytics Competition (www.MUDAC.org) to be held on April 21-22, 2012. The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Winona State University is hosting this event.

    The Midwest Undergraduate Data Analytics Competition will bring together teams of undergraduate students from the upper Midwest to solve an analytics problem for Fastenal, a global leader in the distribution of industrial and construction supplies. Teams will act as consultants for Fastenal and all teams will share their recommendations with representatives from the company. Cash prizes will be awarded to teams that provided the best solutions.

    The registration process (see www.MUDAC.org/registration) should be completed by a faculty advisor or mentor. The registration deadline is Tuesday, April 10, 2012. We strongly encourage faculty advisors or mentors to attend this competition as they will be able to provide some guidance to their students and will serve as judges for the competition. We expect this event to be a great learning experience for students, and we hope to have lots of fun as we bring students, faculty, and mentors together for an intense 24 hours!

    To learn more about the competition, please visit our website: www.MUDAC.org.

    Mathematicians Are Helping Usain Bolt Break Records
    usain bolt


    World-record holding sprinter, Usain Bolt, is getting some advice from an unlikely source, mathematicians. Professor John D. Barrow predicts that Usain can cut his world record from 9.58 seconds to 9.45 seconds.

    What are the Professor's recommendations?
    1. Improve his reaction time.
    2. Wait for advantageous wind conditions
    3. Run at altitude

    Do you know who your friends are? Statisticians do.
    keyboard


    Researchers from Northwestern Illinois have developed algorithms that can scan your emails and determine who your friends are. Their new process is an improvement to the old techniques.

    Previous techniques had focused on defining relationships based on a volume threshold, or have focused on the likelihood of a person responding.
    However, this new technique also takes into account one key feature, response time.

    Read the summary here

    Read the full article here

    ASA Members, don't forget to vote in the ASA 2012 Elections!
    vote


    Reminder!
    If you are a member of ASA, please remember to cast your vote for the ASA 2012 Election of Officers! Voting is currently open, and will close 12:00 midnight PDT, May 3, 2012.