National Institute of Statistical Sciences

NISS at the
1998 Joint Statistical Meetings

Keeping with tradition from past years, NISS had a strong presence at the 1998 JSM in Dallas. Highlights follow.

Jerry Sacks receives ASA Founders Award

NISS Director Jerry Sacks received the Founders Award of the American Statistical Association, the highest honor bestowed by the ASA. Sacks was recognized "for ground breaking and pioneering leadership of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, a vitally important 'arm' of the American Statistical Association; for promotion of cross-disciplinary statistical research and training of dozens of young researchers; and for strengthening the infrastructure of the statistics profession over a span of more than 40 years."

NISS Trustee (and ex-Chair of the NISS Board of Trustees) Janet L. Norwood also received the Founders Award, being honored "as a 'national treasure' in statistics through a career of contributions to the ASA and the U.S. Government; for exceptional service to the ASA as President during its sesquicentennial year; and for motivating key decision makers of all stripes to take an interest in statistics."

Invited Session: Theoretical and Methodological Issues
Arising from NISS Research

NISS Associate Director Alan Karr organized and chair an invited session focusing on theory and methodology generated by NISS research projects. Karr said in introducing the session, "The maturation of NISS and its substantive projects sharpens needs for new theory and methodology. As current and future resources allow, NISS intends to pursue these threads vigorously." New and proposed NISS initiatives include a Program on Theory and Methodology, managed by James Berger of Duke University, and significantly expanded visitor programs.

Speakers and titles from the session:

Xiaoyan Zhang, University of California, Berkeley

"Visualization of Traffic Flow Data" (joint with John Rice)

Michael Ostland, University of California, Berkeley

"Vehicle Tracking via EM and MCMC" (joint with Peter Bickel, John Rice and Yacov Ritov)

Douglas Simpson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Combining Toxicological Information" (joint with Raymond Carroll and Minge Xie)

Claudia Tebaldi, NCAR

"Reconstructing Contingency Tables" (joint with Mike West)

Xiaoyan Zhang	Michael Ostland
Douglas Simpson	Claudia Tebaldi & Mike West