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10/4/2017 SASA Third Newsletter, 2017
http://mailchi.mp/c3bdf7b4344b/5rr5xj7xig-1567181?e=87a467eb23 1/9
Newsletter of the South AfricanStatistical Association (SASA)Postal Address: SASA, PO Box 3341, Matieland, 7602 South Africa Website: www.sastat.org.za
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PRESIDENT’S COLUMN
President’s column: Data ScienceOver the years, research in statistics and the application thereof have been dominated by certain topics that are the proverbial “flavour of the month”. the Mathematisation of statistics. Numerous statisticians worked on Robustness in the seventies; this was until the Bootstrap made its appearance in trapid development of computing power, Data Mining arrived on the statistics scene in the nineties. Then, in 2001, Professor William Cleveland from Puthe term Data Science for the first time, when he encouraged the merging of computer science and statistics. Since then (and even more so today) Dadoubt, the “new kid on the block”.
Image reference: Drew Conway, Venn diagram representation of a Data Scientist’s skills. Read more to see if you agree with Drew Hansen's statement that Data scientist has been proclaimed to be the “sexiest job of the 21st century”.
Editorial
Dear SASA members Welcome to all the new and existing SASA members! Our president, Danie Uys, contributed on Data Science for this issue. The latest information on the 2017 SASA conference to be hosted by the Univerthis year is included. We hope you have registered, since the early bird deadline is 15 September 2017! See a call for a 2018 Conference host and thefor the 2018 Conference in this newsletter too. See the report of the Education Committee with some winners and feedback. A young statistician, Olivia Steyn, tells us about her experience in the bu
MDAG interest group is included. We congratulate Prof Francois Steffens on his 80th birthday. Visit our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SASAstatistics/.
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10/4/2017 SASA Third Newsletter, 2017
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Keep well. Mardi [email protected]
https://www.facebook.com/SASAstatistics/. Contact details, submissions and advertising
Call for Conference Host 2018Any institution wishing to host the annual SASA conference in 2018 should please contact the secretary of the Executive Committee by 31 October 20
Call for nominations for visitors for the 2018 ConferenceAny SASA member wishing to nominate an overseas visitor for the 2018 SASA Conference, please contact the secretary of the Executive Committee The contact details for the secretary are: Dr Inger Fabris-Rotelli Department of Statistics Office IT 6-25 University of Pretoria Hatfield, 0083 Fax (012) 420 5185 [email protected]
Welcome - new members! Our community is growing. Especially welcome to our new student members.
Ms N Abelatif Statistician Medical Research Council [email protected]
Mr A Azeez Tutor University of Forth Hare [email protected]
Dr A Boateng Senior Lecturer University of Limpopo [email protected]
Ms AE Coyne Data Engineer [email protected]
Mr RP Dikgale Junior Lecturer University of Limpopo [email protected]
Dr D Hofmeyr Senior Lecturer Stellenbosch University [email protected]
Ms G Ingabire Senior Data Analyst Genex Insights [email protected]
Dr E Luchemo Postdoctoral fellow University of KwaZulu-Natal [email protected]
Mr TF Maja Junior Lecturer University of Limpopo [email protected]
Ms T Mkwenika Junior Statistician Medical Research Council [email protected]
Dr MM Motshwane Senior Lecturer Tshwane University of Technology [email protected]
Ms P Mtshali Student University of KwaZulu-Natal [email protected]
Mr M Mudau Reource Geologist The RVN Group (Pty) Ltd [email protected]
Mr MP Nkabinde Statistician Eskom [email protected]
Mr B Paulse Student University of the Western Cape [email protected]
Vacancies on the EC: call for nominations We need your help: please nominate SASA members for Vice-president, Sponsorship, Treasurer and Managing Editor of the Journal Nomination form
Prof Francois Steffens turns 80
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Francois Steffens, a lifetime of being a Statistician A special interview with emeritus Professor Francois Steffens on his 80th birthday by Marie Smith
"At 80 I am still passionate about analysing data and learning new models, new techniques and software, describing my role as that of a Data Enginee
Read more about his fascinating career and love affair with statistics
MDAG news
Johané Nienkemper-Swanepoel (centre) receiving the stiftung from Mrs Helga Gaul (right) with Prof Wolfgang Gaul (left) looking on, during Tokio, Japan.
Johané Nienkemper-Swanepoel, currently a PhD student of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science and Biometry lecturer in the Genetics DUniversity was recently awarded the Helga and Wolfgang Gaul Stiftung. The stiftung is awarded biennially by the International Federation of Classificaresearcher, under the age of 30, with high potential working in the area of Classification, Clustering and related topics. Johané presented her work in avisualising and imputing missing categorical data” at the recent IFCS conference in Tokio where she received the award from Mrs Helga and Prof Wolfsecond year of registration for a PhD on Biplots for categorical data, investigating imputation and visualisation for missing data. Apart from the IFCS20presented her research at the IFCS2015 conference, COMPSTAT2016 and Data Science, Statistics and Visualisation conference in 2017 as well as aconference. She has published one paper on her masters research at Free State University, has one paper under review in an ISI rated journal and is second paper, aiming to complete her studies in 2019. As secretary of MDAG she is not only excelling in research, but proved a pivotal member of theanalysis community. She represents MDAG on the IFCS council and forms part of the local organising committee for the international conference on CRelated Methods (CARME 2019) to be hosted by MDAG in Stellenbosch.
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BOONBOOKS: Free Statistics e-textbooks
www.bookboon.com is a website offering free university textbooks, offering students around the world and in all of Africa free textbooks. They offer bosubjects, including Mathematics and Statistics (probability, stochastic processes, inference, multivariate methods, time series etc.) and books on statisothers, SPSS and R. ABOUT BOOKBOON Free textbooks for university students and business books for professionals in 9 different languages More than 75 million downloads across the world in 2016 50% of the books are downloaded by students in the USA and Europe, while the other half is helping students in developing countries Textbooks in PDF are financed by a limited amount of advertising inside the books Our authors get paid a share of the revenue generated by the books An exam section (MCQs) for the students to test their understanding of the books is being introduced right now If you might consider publishing with them, come into contact with Karin Jacobsen. They are always on the lookout for good authors. One of the bookstutorial: An introduction into R applications and programming” by Niël J le Roux and Sugnet Lubbe.
www.bookboon.com [email protected]
Young statistician: Olivia Steyn
Olivia Steyn is a young, energetic person with a quantitative background. She is working hard and enjoying the corporate life. In between performing analyses, she somehow manages to make time for rock climbing and playing the drums. Read more about Olivia
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Education News
SASA 2nd Year Scholarship and Bursary InformationHoD’s and academics, please inform potential students about the SASA scholarship and bursaries. Students (studying statistics) who will commence their third year studies at any South African university in January/February 2018 are eligible for the aSeptember and application forms will be available on the SASA website. Potential students must complete the form in its entirety. Completed forms must be submitted to Dr CM Clohessy, Department of Statistics, PO Box 77000, NMMU, Port Elizabeth, 6031 or electronically. Part IClohessy no later than Friday 6 January 2017. In the case of applying for a bursary, Part II of the form, to be completed by an academic referee, must referee (not the applicant) by the Friday 5 January 2018. Applications received thereafter will not be considered. For additional information contact Dr CM Clohessy ([email protected]).
Feedback from Bursary Recipient
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Mr Sisa Pazi receiving his Masters (MSc) degree in April Graduation Ceremony at the Nelson Mandela University in 2017.
“I was awarded the SASA 2nd year bursary for my 3rd year of study at the Nelson Mandela University. This funding help me to continue by studies to aI registered for my masters degree in Mathematical Statistics at the Nelson Mandela University 2015. For my masters degree I was awarded the SASAproject covered classification methods used to identify electricity fraud. These methods were tested on a case study in the Nelson Mandela Bay. This dthis year, 2017. The bursary was sufficient to cover registration, tuition, accommodation and study materials. In addition, I was able to attend and presresearch at the SASA conferences in 2015 and 2016. I always had a keen interest in a career in academics. The bursaries I have received throughout my studies have contributed in making this a reality aNelson Mandela University in July 2016. I am currently doing research groundwork for a PhD in Mathematical Statistics with a plan to register in 2018.assessment of the observed epidemiological characteristics of patients with and without Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) in Livingstone hospital, Port Elizabepredict the recovery of patients with AKI after submission to Intensive Care Unit. Additionally, this research will involve the customisation and validatioAcute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE II), Simplified Acute Physiology Score 3 (SAPS 3) and Sequential Organic Failure Assessmfound to be predictors of recovery of patients with AKI. I would like to thank SASA for providing me funding for studies, without this funding and the hard work of SASA committee members my dream of bechave been possible.”
SASA 3rd Year Scholarship and Bursary AnnouncementATTENTION: HoD’s and academics, please inform current third year students about the scholarship (based on merit) and bursaries (merit and need) sICCSSA. Students who are planning to enrol for an honours degree in statistics in 2018 at any South African university are eligible for the awards. Entries open forms will be available on the SASA website. Completed forms must be submitted electronically to Dr L Fletcher at [email protected], hard copies may be sent to her at the Department of Hatfield, 0028. Part I of the form must reach Dr Fletcher no later than Friday 5 January 2018. In the case of applying for a bursary, Part II of the form, treferee, must be returned by the academic referee (not the applicant) also no later than Friday 6 January 2018
Third Year Scholarship Recipients (2017)
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Mr Christopher Dunderdale receiving a cum laude for his BSc degree and honours supervisors Dr Warren Brettenny and Dr Chantelle ClohUniversity graduation ceremony 2017.
2nd year SASA Bursary/ scholarship winners, Ms Amy Langston (Left) and Ms Hannah Maclean (right) with Professor Lizanne Raubenheime
2017 SASA POST GRADUATE PAPER COMPETITIONHonours Project Competition Sponsored by SAS® It is the SASA Education Committee’s pleasure to announce the winners of the 2016/2017 SASA Honours Project Competition. We received 12 honouthis year. Thank you to Stellenbosch University (SU), University of Cape Town (UCT), University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), University of Pretoria (UP)Witwatersrand (Wits) for their entries. Congratulations to the following entries: First Prize “Laplace Variational Inference of the Single-season Site Occupancy Model using a Probit Link function” Mr Zolisa Bleki (UCT) (R7600 + sponsorship to attend and present the project at SASA2017) Second Prize “Methods for Semi-supervised Text Classification” Mr Gabriel De Wet (UP) (R5000) Third Prize “An Examination of the Use and Interpretation of Principal Components in Generalized Linear Models to Treat Multicollinearity Amongst Predictors”
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Mr Nathaniel Joselson (UCT) (R3840) In fourth place, there was the project “Empirical Distributions of the Daily FTSE/JSE All-Share Index Returns: A Comparison” by Ms Courtney Goven The SASA Education Committee is grateful to the following judges for their time and effort: Prof Legesse Debusho (UNISA), Prof Carl Lombard (MRC)Victoria Goodall (NMMU) and Dr Morné Lamont (SU). As always, ranking the top projects was a difficult task, in particular due to the variety of standarnumber of projects that had to be adjudicated. We’d also like to extend a special word of thanks to SAS for their continued support of this competition
Apply for one of our SASA bursuries today!!Find out about bursary opportunities with SASA at www.sastat.org.za or Facebook: @SASAstatistics
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Announcement: A pdf version of this newsletter will be available on the SASA webpage.
Last date of submission for news items are as follows: May newsletter: 1 April
September newsletter: 1 August December/January newsletter: 1 December
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Copyright © 2017 SASA (South African Statistical Association), All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list
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