Welcome to ASAP

Dear Philadelphia Statistics Colleagues,

I wish you all a peaceful, healthy, and prosperous year. I look forward to working with you and my fellow officers to make our chapter thrive in the coming year.

Before we look to our year ahead, please allow me to thank Dr. Elizabeth Stuart, Associate Professor in Mental Health/Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, for an engaging Fall workshop on “Propensity Score Methods for Estimating Causal Effects.” Her talk was informative and well received. A social mixer followed the talk, marking the second one that we have hosted. Our goal in this changing economic climate is to bring together statisticians from various sectors to foster new relationships, incubate new ideas, and tackle challenging problems.

Along these lines, Nancy Geller recently urged us (Amstat News, August 2011) to increase our visibility by wearing our identity as a discipline proudly, in both professional and social settings. She asked that we take advantage of opportunities to brag about the achievements of statistical colleagues, and when discussing new projects, that we point out the potential contributions statistics could make to the results.

Looking ahead, please join us for our highlight Mid-Winter Gathering on beautiful and historic Boathouse Row. The evening promises to bring together a lively group of statisticians, along with their significant others, for a fully catered evening of h'ordeuvres, a delicious gourmet dinner, light and entertaining discussion of data and educational policy, followed by our much anticipated signature bananas foster dessert. Mark your calendars for Friday, January 27, 2012, for this fun event. Look for more information in this issue of our newsletter, including information on our speaker, Distinguished Research Scientist and author Howard Wainer. Also provided is a link to the event registration, which is easy to use and facilitated by a secure internet site that provides the luxury of payment by credit card, Paypal, or Google Pay.

~Alex Hanlon


Short Course Announcement

Posted on January 1, 2012

TBD.