2000 ANNUAL
SECTION REPORT
Section: Bayesian Statistical Science Section (SBSS)
Submitted By: Carl N. Morris, SBSS Chair Date: March 7, 2001
Number of meetings held:
2 meetings in person (below), one for Section officers
only, and one an Open Section Meeting
The SBSS Officers met many times during the year as
issues arose, via email. Date(s) held:
Both meetings in person were on Aug 15, 2000 at the
Joint Statistical Meetings in Indianapolis
Approximate number attending each meeting:
12 at the Section officers Meeting
90 at the Open Section Meeting
Please summarize, in one paragraph, major issues
discussed and/or accomplishments:
SBSS continued to maintain its high-level regular programs
of invited
and contributed sessions and round table luncheons within
the ASA
meetings. It
awarded the Mitchell and Savage prizes, and publication
of the SBSS Proceedings, and running its website. James Albert and
Dalene Stangle both gave Bayesian short courses at the ASA
Annual
Meeting in August. Major new accomplishments in 2000 included SBSS's
decision to co-sponsor with ISBA two new prizes (for DeGroot
and
Lindley), its co-sponsorship in an international meeting
(ISBA, in
Crete, June 2000) and the decision to co-sponsor a regional
meeting
(run by the University of California at Irvine, in Laguna
Beach April
2001). The SBSS
Publications Officer, Juana Sanchez, undertook to
significantly upgrade the ASA-SBSS website, and James Press
developed
the SBSS history, "The Formation of the Section on
Bayesian Statistical
Science (SBSS) of the American Statistical
Association", available on
the SBSS website.
Highlights in 2000:
SBSS continues to be a vital and active Section of the
ASA. It
operates its own programs within the ASA and also interfaces
with other
organizations, especially ISBA (International Society for
Bayesian
Analysis), to disseminate and to encourage Bayesian ideas
and
research.
SBSS elected offices are its Chair, Chair-elect, Past-Chair,
Program
Chair, Program Chair-Elect, Secretary/Treasurer,
Publications Chair,
and Section Reps to COS. The officers in these positions were filled
(respectively) by Carl Morris, Alan Gelfand, William
Strawderman,
Wesley Johnson, Robert Weiss, Joseph Ibrahim, Juana Sanchez,
and Ron
Christensen.
Rod Little was appointed by this Committee to serve for 3
years as the SBSS Representative to the Mitchell Prize
Committee,
replacing Mike West.
SBSS held research seminars and meetings, both internal to
the ASA and
also externally, in collaboration with the International
Society for
Bayesian Analysis (ISBA).
Within the ASA, the SBSS Program Chair, Wes Johnson,
organized several
invited and contributed sessions and round table luncheons
for the ASA
Annual Meeting.
The SBSS Proceedings volume contained papers presented
in meeting sessions sponsored or co-sponsored by the SBSS,
most of them
having been presented at the Joint Statistical Meetings.
S. James Press wrote the history of SBSS, since its founding
in 1992,
and published it on the SBSS website. Its title is "The Formation of
the Section on Bayesian Statistical Science (SBSS) of the
American
Statistical Association."
SBSS co-sponsored with ISBA, the Sixth World Meeting of the
International Society for Bayesian Analysis, in Crete, June
2000.
SBSS gave its approval for co-sponsorship of a Regional ISBA
Meeting
(April 6-8, 2001) which will focus on Bayesian applications
in the
Behavioral and Social Sciences. This is organized by Professor Dale
Poirier, Department of Economics at University of
California, Irvine
and sponsored by UCI's Institute for Mathematical Behavioral
Sciences
(IMBS), Department of Economics, and its School of Social
Sciences.
SBSS Officers decided to raise annual dues for 2001 from
$5.00 in 2000
to $7.00 for regular ASA members. Dues for graduate students stay
unchanged at $1.00.
Prizes and Awards:
SBSS again co-sponsored two 2000 Savage Awards, always given
to recent
PhDs for Bayesian research covered in their theses, one for
applications and one for theory. Ehsan Soofi chaired the Savage
Committee as he has in the past (but for the last time).
The 2000 Mitchell Prize was awarded at the ISBA meeting in
Crete, June
2000, to Prof. Jun Liu, as the outstanding contribution to
Bayesian
applications.
Liu's prize is based on his 1999 paper in JASA.
SBSS also decided in 2000 to co-sponsor and to be a
contributing
founder to two new ISBA prizes, the DeGroot Prize, and the
Lindley
Prize.
SBSS Student Travel Awards went to eight PhD students in
U.S.
statistics departments to help support their travel to the
2000 Joint
Statistical Meetings and to give papers on Bayesian topics.
Concerns:
As SBSS has looked to expand its influence and activities,
other than dues, one of the few areas under its control for
future revenues is to increase continuing education. However,
we were disappointed to find that the ASA gives the sections
a
very small cut of the workshop income, less than 4%. E.g. for
SBSS, the 46 participants in Albert's (20) and Stangle's
(26) 2
summer 2000 workshops paid $14,328, but SBSS only ended up
with
$495 of that (3.5%).
That's not a great incentive to increase these activities.
Would the ASA Directors consider increasing this incentive
to
Sections? Doing
so could lead to more courses and to increased
revenues for the ASA as well as for the Sections.
Other:
The SBSS
website has been updated and improved regularly by the SBSS
Publications Officer, Juana Sanchez. That site contains additional and
more detailed information about the 2000 SBSS
activities. Such material
is at:
http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~jsanchez/sbssnews/sbssnews.html