- New Chapter Officers -  

Effectively on 01Jul2015, OCLBASA's newly elected officers start their 2-year term.  They are,

• Secretary:  Emily Weng (new)
• Vice President for Academic Affairs: Stacey Hancock (re-elected)
• Vice President for Professional Affairs:  Harry Hiner (re-elected)

The outgoing Secretary is Annamarie Stehli who has been serving the role since the chapter's adoption in 2012.  In addition, Chris Hanks successfully completed his term as the Chair of Nominations and Elections Committee.  The Committee's three members group now consists of:

• Harold Dyck (Chair)
• Danh Nguyen (member, 2nd year)
• Annamarie Stehli (member, 1st year) 

We wish to thank Chris and Annamarie for their excellent service to the chapter and community.  Further, we also welcome Emily, Harold, and Annamarie into their new roles.  

ASA Traveling Course, November 12th, 2016

Dr. Mathew Cefalu, Statistician, RAND Corporation gave a short course entitled: "Estimating Propensity Scores and Inverse Probability of Treatment Weights When Drawing Causal Inferences" at Beckman Hall of Chapman University.  Twenty-six local statisticians/students registered for the class.  The following is an outline for the course:  

2nd Annual Posters Symposium, Dec 10th, 2016

  Minitalks Quarterly Social, September 29th, 2016

Following registration and free light dinner, invited speakers present a topic related to statistics for 5-10 minutes.  This event was well attended by about 40 local statisticians, including first-time chapter members.   The following is the list of speakers and topics:  

OCLBASA Chapter Picnic/Potluck/Annual Business Meeting, June 11th 2016

OCLBASA held its Annual Business Meeting together with the June Quarterly Social in a form of BBQ/potluck at the park-like facility of Duck Club. A lot of food, beverage, and dishes were prepared. There were 29 members and guests and family members came and enjoyed a relaxing evening. That was a good opportunity that attendees not only communicated with each other, but also individual members came together to share their opinions of our association’s goals and plan how to achieving the goal.

Our secretary, Emily Weng, introduced our newly elected officers (President, VP for Membership Affairs, and Treasurer) and each spoke briefly about their positions. During the meeting, the topic of SAS courses cost has been mentioned which need a lot money and drained our account.

Annual High School Poster Competition, APR 16TH 2016

Thanks to the support of the Orange County Long Beach ASA Chapter, the Southern California ASA Chapter, and Chapman University, our annual AP Statistics High School Poster Competition on April 16 was a great success!  Over twenty poster teams participated from local high schools on data analysis projects ranging from “How does shyness affect the adoptability of dogs?” to “Am I a Feminist?”  Troy High School seniors Michelle Guo, Tiffany Fung, and Mia Chao won the Robert Newcomb Grand Prize for their poster titled “Is Senioritis Real?” The posters of the five other winning teams included “Bill of Rights Knowledge”, “Baggage Check”, “Sex vs Sleep”, “Spring Forward”, and “Music Focus” from Troy High School and Rancho Cucamonga High School.

Garren Gaut, a Cognitive Science graduate student at the University of California, Irvine, gave an invited talk to the students on “Data Science, Graduate Research, and Jobs for Statisticians.”  Many thanks to both ASA Chapters, to Chapman University, and to all who participated as judges, organizers, teachers, and students. We look forward to seeing you at the poster competition next spring!

   2016 1st Quarterly Social Featured an Informative and Interesting Panel Discussion

on "Data Science vs Statistics" 

Panel Members:  Erik J. Linstead of Chapman University; Stacey Hancok of UCI, Gary Chung of Johnson & Johnson, Doug Smith of Los Angeles Times and Jeremy Miles of Google.  The event was moderated by Jeen Liu of Allergan.

Following Careers Day, the chapter held its first Quarterly Social in 2016 at the Cal State Fullerton McCarthy Hall in the afternoon.  Traditionally, statistician has been the professionals whose job is to deal with data, from designing the way data to be collected to establishing the way data to be analyzed. In recent years, "Data Scientist" has emerged as a new profession. Some ambiguity, confusion, and debate have been generated between the two fields.  Can you tell the differences, or are they different at all?  Even ASA Board recently issued a statement on The Role of Statistics in Data Science.  During the panel session, each panel member gave a brief presentation of this topic from their perspectives; afterwards, audience raised questions or offered comments in the open forum. 

   4th Careers Day Event Was a Success on March 5th, 2016

A successful 4^th Annual Careers Day on March 5^th, 2016, organized by The Orange County Long Beach Chapter of the American Statistical Association (OCLBASA) was held at California State University, Fullerton. More than 150 students and professionals - a historical record number - attended this event.  Available at the event were career options, employment opportunities, information on the local academic graduate programs, and interview suggestions/instructions. Close to 20 industry and academic organizations participated as exhibitors in the events.  In addition, 6 volunteers contributed their time and advice to students who wished to improve their resumes and interview skills.  All students received a 1-year chapter membership at no charge and all attendees were invited to join ASA. A keynote speech, “Exploring Careers in Statistics”, was delivered by UCI Professor Jessica Utts, President of American Statistical Association. 

  OCLBASA 1st Professional Poster Symposium, December 5th, 2015

The OCLB ASA Chapter held its 2015 Winter Quarterly Social on 05 December (Saturday) in the Community Meeting Room, IRWD, Irvine.  About 25 members attended the event during which 4 members (Charlie Liu, Olga Korosteleva, Jenny Jiao, and Bridger Jimenez) presented their projects by sharing posters with other statisticians.  It was a wonderful opportunity for our members to enjoy drinks and snacks while learning some statistics and connecting with fellow statisticians!

ASA’s Effective Presentations for Statisticians

Ms. Rebecca Brafman, an ASA certified trainer, delivered a well-received training of "Effective Presentations for Statisticians" on Oct. 18, 2015 at IRWS Community Meeting Room in Irvine.  The objectives of this course are to learn how to do effective presentations and tell a story with data analysis.  It is designed to be an interactive session that will refine student's presentation skills.   

An audience of over 40 in this training were mixed with different backgrounds - academicians, educators, professional statisticians, and students across Southern California.  There was a high level of engagement from the audience with discussions and experience sharing during the 4-hour session.  

Trainer: The certified trainer, Ms. Rebecca Brafman, has worked at Chevron for 10 years and currently works as a decision analyst. 

Training File:  Use this link.  

Fall Quarterly Social, Sept 2015 

The OCLB ASA Chapter held its 2015 Fall Quarterly Social on Friday, Sept 25th in the Duck Club of IRWD, Irvine.  About 40 members attended the free event which started with a pizza social, and followed with the "mini-talks".  Members enjoyed the food as well a light statistical stimulation given by 4 volunteer speakers.  A video on the ASA web site about Leadership Training for Statisticians was played as well. Speakers and the topics of talks were listed below:

 Mobilize, 29Aug2015

Rob Gould from UCLA will describe the Mobilize project Saturday August 29, 2015 at Chapman University in Orange, CA. Mobilize is a partnership between the UCLA Statistics Department, UCLA Center X, and the Los Angeles Unified School District. The objective is to bring data science and statistical thinking into high school algebra and biology classrooms. The Mobilize curriculum uses “participatory sensing” which means students use their iPhones to collect data on themselves. They then use their own data to learn graphical and data analysis using R and RStudio.

Date:  29 August, 2015 (Saturday)

Time:  Coffee/tea at 10:30 am, talk at 11:00 am, followed by no-host lunch and discussion

Place:  Chapman University, Beckman 103

Fee:  Free

Registration:  Please register via Meetup for planning purposes.  

Contact:  Madeline Bauer (mbauer@usc.edu)

Outcomes: 

- Upcoming Election of Chapter Officers May 2015 -  

It’s election time.  On May 18th, Chapter members in good standing will receive an email ballot for the election of candidates to three offices: Secretary, Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Vice President for Professional Affairs.  

The Nominations and Elections Committee has put forth a slate of candidates whose profiles can be found on the OCLB website: Click on the “Officers” drop-down menu and choose “Candidate Statements”; descriptions of the offices and their associated duties can be found by choosing “Officers’ Duties” from the drop-down menu.  Once members receive their ballots, they will have until May 30th to review the candidate profiles and cast their votes.  

In addition, from now until May 4th, the Committee shall consider additional nominations from Chapter members.  If any member in good standing would like to nominate a fellow member, please feel free to submit the nomination via email to coloneloftruth@gmail.com, including contact information, a brief description of the candidate, and an explanation for the nomination.  And please limit nominations to those members who are both able and willing to commit to fulfilling the duties of the office.  Members may only stand for one office per election cycle.

We look forward to a great election.

Very Truly Yours,

The OCLBASA Nominations and Elections Committee

Outcomes: Of 188 members eligible to vote, 20 cast their votes to elect Harry Hiner as VP for Professional Affairs, Stacey Hancock as VP for Academic Affairs, and Emily Weng as Secretary.  All three candidates received 100% of the cast votes.  The three officers will start their duties on 01Jul2015 for a 2-year term until 30Jun2017.  

AP Statistics Posters Competition, 30May2015

The ASA Chapters of Southern California (SCASA), Orange County/Long Beach (OCLBASA), and Chapman University are jointly sponsoring this year's competition at Chapman University, centrally located within Orange, California with easy freeway access. The competition will be limited to 60 posters total, with a maximum of 15 from any one school.  Entry application date will be used to make the determination.

Date & Time: 30 May 2015, Saturday; 1 pm - 4 pm (Update on May 24th:  Use the link to see the final event schedule.)

Location: Chapman University Center

Organizer: OCLBASA/SCASA/Chapman University

Registration:  Online registration is now OPEN (go tohttp://postercomp.sc-asa.org/registration_2015.htm) and will close at midnight of Saturday, May 23rd. (Update on May 24th - Registration is now closed).

Contact: For more information, contact the PosterComp Chairman Lee Kucera at lekucera@cox.net

<lekucera@cox.net style="box-sizing: border-box;">For more information, please use the following link:http://postercomp.sc-asa.org/

<lekucera@cox.net style="box-sizing: border-box;">Call for Judges: Anyone interested in serving the judge role please contact Stacey Hancock at stacey.hancock@uci.edu <stacey.hancock@uci.edu style="box-sizing: border-box;">or Madeline Bauer at mbauer@usc.edu<mbauer@usc.edu style="box-sizing: border-box;">.

Outcomes:  The ASA Chapters of Southern California (SCASA), Orange County/Long Beach (OCLBASA), and Chapman University jointly sponsored this year's AP Statistics Poster Competition at Chapman University.  A total of 19 teams from several local high schools in the Southern California region participated in this event.  Each team was evaluated and interviewed by three judges.  Students also were given a guided campus tour of Chapman during breaks.  Six teams were chosen as prize winners.  Daniel Freed of St. Margaret's Episcopal School won the grand Robert L Newcomb prize.  Mr. Freed's project was entitled "Analysis Data" with sub-title of "Is there an association between political party and change in yearly average unemployment rate for a given presidential term from 1900 to 2013?"  High school teachers also recommended to the planning committee a change in time for next year so that students will have more time for the project.

ASA Traveling Course, 16May2015 "Working with R to Analyze and Plot Data"

Speaker: Professor Di Cook, Iowa State University

Date & Time: 16 May 2015, Saturday (9:00 - 5:00), registration begins at 8:30

Location: Irvine Lecture Hall, Chapman University

Sponsors: ASA, OCLBASA, and Chapman University Department of Mathematics and Computer Science

Fee: $55 for members and Chapman University staff; $25 for students; and $65 for others. The fee covers electronic course materials, snack/drinks, and a pizza lunch. The student fee was reduced (from $40) due to an anonymous donation in memory of Bob Newcomb, the Chapter's founding president.

Registration: Registration at MeetUp web site is required for planning purpose.

Contact: Any questions about the course, please contact: Charlie Liu (cliu@kythera.com<cliu@kytherabiopharma.com>) or Thomas Lin (tsunghua9@gmail.com<tsunghua9@gmail.com>)

Outcomes:  On May 16, 2015, the ASA Travelling Course "Working with R to Analyze and Plot Data" was presented at Chapman University by Professor Di Cook and her graduate student Eric Hare from Iowa State University. Professor Di Cook is widely known for her expertise in exploratory data analysis, multivariate methods and, in particular, data visualization and statistical graphics. In this course they focused on a data centric introduction to using R in a reproducible way.  They also incorporated lots of data graphics and exploratory data analysis, centered on contemporary data examples, produced publication quality graphics and designed interactive web-applets that allow people to interact with data and statistical analyses in a user-friendly way. The participants has worked through different packages, such as ggplot2, maps, ggmap, ggsubplot, tidyr, dplyr and lubridateshiny, to interact with their datasets.  A total of 38 students attended the class.  

Spring Quarterly Social, Mar 2015 

The OCLB ASA Chapter held its 2015 Spring Quarterly Social on Friday, March 27th in the Duck Club of IRWD, Irvine.  More than 20 members attended the free event which started with a pizza social, and followed with the "mini-talks".  Members enjoyed the food as well a light statistical stimulation given by 5 volunteer speakers.  Speakers and the topics of talks were listed below:

The Third Annual Careers Day, Feb 2015

The OCLB ASA Chapter held its 3^rd Annual Careers Day on Saturday, February 21^st in the Family & Consumer Sciences Building on the Cal State University, Long Beach campus.  This event was by far the most heavily attended of the three events our young chapter has hosted since 2013 with nearly 80 students/statisticians-in-transition and 21 exhibitors.

Presentations were delivered by Dr. Pete Meyer, Senior Ads Quality Statistician at Google, and Dr. John Adams, Research Scientist Biostatistician III, Research & Evaluation, Kaiser Permanente.

The 15 companies and 6 academic programs that participated as exhibitors were:

Quarterly Social Jan 2015

The Chapter held its first Quarterly Social at the Duck Club of IRWD on the 17th of January.  In addition to providing an opportunity for chapter members to mingle with one another, we started to entertain the idea of using this occasion as a way to learn.  Robert Gould of UCLA was the first featured speaker to share with us about DataFest - an annual Big Data analysis competition for college students across the country.  
Although finding the location was a bit challenging for some, the event drew more than 50 participants who enjoyed the pizza, conversations, and the nice setting of the Club.  For those who missed it, Rob's presentation is available by using this link.  

A Statistical Tribute to Bob Newcomb

November 15, 2014

City of Hope, Duarte

 

For pre-registration, please use the follow link at Eventbrite site

 

 

http://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-statistical-tribute-to-bob-newcomb-tickets-13397098081#

To  view the speakers' abstracts, visit:
http://sc-asa.org/eNewsletter/October2014/Abstracts.pdf

To  view the obituary which appeared in the Orange County Register, visit:
http://sc-asa.org/eNewsletter/October2014/Obituary.pdf

 

 

Dr. Robert (Bob) Newcomb of University of California at Irvine, the founding President of Orange County Long Beach Chapter (OCLB) of ASA, passed away on July 10 2014 due to complications of a sudden illness.  Three ASA chapters in the southern California region (San Diego, Southern California, and OCLB) are organizing a memorial service to celebrate Bob's successful life, which profoundly influenced the statistical community and the lives of many statisticians.  The morning memorial service will be followed by afternoon statistical presentations by invited renowned statisticians who also had personal and professional relationships with Bob over many years. These speakers include:

 

Dr. Bob Rodriguez, Senior Director, SAS Research and Development

 

Dr. Karen Messer, Chief, Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, University of California, San Diego

 

Dr. Duane Steffey, Director, Statistical and Data Sciences, Exponent

 

Dr. Danh V. Nguyen, Director, Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Research Design Unit, UCI Institute for Clinical Translational Science

 

All statisticians who are interested in learning about or sharing Bob's legend are welcome.  Further announcement of the program details will be available on the web sites of the three ASA chapters. 

 

If you are interested in speaking at the memorial service, please contact Colleen Kelly, kstat.consulting@gmail.com

 

For further information, please contact Thomas Lin, thomasnancy.lin@gmail.com

 

Please note that this memorial is in addition to the UCI Memorial Service, which will be held at UCI on Oct 19, 2014. http://www1.icts.uci.edu/rnewcomb/notices.cfm

 

Donations in memory of Bob can be made to Robert Newcomb Fellowship Fund:

 

ucifuture.com/impact/newcomb.php

 

 

Saturday, April 26^th, 2014

The 2nd Annual OCLBASA AP Statistics Project Competition will be held at the UCI Medical Center which is centrally located within Orange County, and offers easy freeway access.

This year the competition will be limited to 60 posters total, with a maximum of 15 from any one school. In case more than 60 posters are submitted the entry application date will be used to make the determination of which posters will be included in the competition.

Each submitting team needs to select a leader who will register the whole team. Note that a single student may submit a poster as a team of 1. Please have your school address, team members' e-mail addresses, project title, and teacher's name and e-mail address handy when you register. Students may only enter as part of one team.

Online registration is now OPEN.

Registration closes at noon, Monday, April 21, 2014 or whenever 60 teams have registered.

Click on the following link to register:

  http://sc-asa.org/postercomp/registration_2014.htm

For more information contact the PosterComp Chair Lee Kucera at

lekucera@cox.net

 

 

On Saturday, March 15th, the Chapter held the 2014 OCLBASA Careers Day
at CSU Long Beach

 

More than 70 students and professional statisticians attended this event which offered a rich array of information about careers in statistics as well as about area graduate
programs in statistics. The keynote address on current and future employment opportunities
in statistics was given by Ron Wasserstein, Executive Director of the American Statistical
Association. Everyone felt that his talk was highly relevent and provided valuable information
about careers in statistics which was the topic of the day.

Chapter Election Results
---------------------------------------------------------------

Congratulations to the following three Chapter members who were elected
to the indicated Chapter officer positions

    VP, Academic Affairs – Stacey Hancock

    VP, Professional Affairs – Harry Hiner

    VP, Membership Affairs – Joanne Christopherson

The on-line voting of this election ran during 05-19 of Feb, 2014. 
The three new VPs will take their office duties for a 2-year term starting 01Jul2014. 

***********************************************
************Applied Statistics Workshop *************
***********************************************

 The Applied Statistics Workshop will be held on Saturday, March 29, at Covel Commons, UCLA. It promises to be very informative this year.  The title of the workshop is Introduction to Generalized Linear Mixed Models with Emphasis on Non-normal Data. Our speaker will be Dr. Walter Stroup, Department of Statistics, University ofNebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of a book on generalized linear mixed models.

There will be five confirmed exhibitors/vendors: JMP, SAS Savvy, UCLA Statistics Consulting Center, UCLA Department of Medicine Statistics Core, and LA R Users Group.

Posters will be displayed in the hallway for all participants to judge them. There are five confirmed posters so far. The best poster will receive a cash prize.

Please go to https://www.123signup.com/event?id=dcbht and register for this event.  Please let all your colleagues and students know about it.  The early-bird registration closes on March 20th.

If you would like to submit a poster, it is never too late. Please email your intention to Olga.Korosteleva@csulb.edu.

 

Congratulations!
Great Success at 1st High School
AP Statistics Poster Competition

 

The Orange County Long Beach Chapter held its first High School AP Statistics competition on June 1^st at the University of California, Irvine. The turnout was wonderful, with 146 students presenting 57 posters to the team of judges.  The entries were very thought provoking, and 7 teams came away with a cash prize of $25. 

Concurrent with the competition the Chapter also held a tutorial session, for those teachers who accompanied their students. This session was led by Chapter members representing the our special interest group in Statistics Education.  Topics discussed in the session included: Data Resources for Teachers (Jessica Utts--UCI); Technology for AP Statistics--JMP, Minitab, TI-Nspire (Lee Kucera--Capistrano USD); Test Development Committee News (Paul Rodriguez--Troy HS); and What can our ASA Chapter do to help AP Statistics teachers? (local members).

   
               Conner Pekarek (San Clemente HS)                                          Emile Shehada (Troy HS)

    
        Frankie Pinto, Victoria Mendez, Haley Clarke                        Jihee Lee, Young Song, Johanthan Han
                        (San Clemente HS)                                                            (Whitney HS)

The success of the competition was made possible by the coordinators, Jessica Utts and Lee Kucera; logistics expert Rosemary Busta (UC Irvine); Chapter President Bob Newcomb (UC Irvine) and the coordinator of judging and scoring Stacey Hancock (UC Irvine). We also thank the volunteer judges whose participation not only supported the Chapter, but provided valuable feedback and mentoring to the students.  Donations for the event were graciously accepted from Texas Instruments, Allergan, Mini Tab, JMP, and Barrons.

The Chapter leadership felt this was a very successful inaugural event, and hope to reach out to the students and teachers of more local high schools for next year!  

    
      Marelle Arndt, Alex Drabkin, Andrew Stefaniak                           Matthew Ho and Rudy Venguswamy
                      (San Clemente HS)                                                                   (Whitney HS)

                                                            (PHOTO NOT AVAILABLE)
                                                  Tanya Chellani, Sangita Rajan (Whitney HS)

About the competition: The project competition allows students a chance to show and discuss the results of a study or experiment they have conducted to answer some question with professional statisticians who will judge their work. Students must stay by their poster board to await interviews by the judges assigned to the entry. After you have been interviewed and scored by judges, you may wander around and look at other project posters. However, do not interrupt or observe other entries as they are being judged. Also, note that a judge or two might chat informally with you about your project but not be assigned to score you. Be sure you have been interviewed by assigned judges before you leave your poster board. If you’re not sure when talking with a judge if you’re being scored, simply ask them if this is a judging interview or just an informal chat. Some judges just can’t help discussing an interesting looking topic they run across. The number of judging interviews per entry will be announced when the judging begins.

For further information, contact either of the UC-Irvine OC/LB PosterComp Co-Chairs: Lee Kucera at lekucera@att.net or Jessica Utts at jutts@uci.edu