In this issue:
Michael P. Windham
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of South Alabama
Mobile, AL 36688
windham@mathstat.usouthal.edu
I have very much enjoyed the opportunity to serve you as President for the last two years. We have seen some changes that I believe are for the better. I think a quick look at the CSNA homepage (http://www.pitt.edu/~csna/) is enough to convince one that we are certainly in tune with the times. You can see there several things that attest to the quality and quantity of our activity. A look at the Call for Papers for the June meeting in Amherst shows that we are have a fine scientific experience in store for us. Sessions in consensus theory, graph theory, information retrieval, image analysis and reticulate evolution, as well as the keynote speakers Donald German, Bruno Leclerc, Phillipa Pattison, and David Swofford are something to look forward to. A quick scan of the table of contents of the next issue of the Journal of Classification, shows that much interesting research is going on among us. I am proud to be a member of CSNA and honored to have been President.
Of course, being President is easy, if you have people like Stan Wasserman and Dawn Iacobucci doing the hard work of "running the business." I cannot say how important their work is to the success of CSNA, and how much I appreciate having worked with these two. I would also like to congratulate the Editors of our publications for the fine work they do. Buck McMorris of the Newsletter and Fionn Murtagh for the Service have had met serious challenges during the last year in converting to online and computer media. And of course there is the incomparable Phipps Arabie of the Journal, the international scientific community is well aware of the outstanding job he as done as the only editor the Journal has had.
Thank you once again for the privilege of serving you and my congratulations to Pete Bryant as he takes over. I wish him well and am sure that he will enjoy the experience as much as I have.
Dawn Iacobucci
Department of Marketing
Kellogg Graduate School of Management
Northwestern University
2001 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208
To members of The Classification Society of North America. I have collected
the bios on our candidates (two for the Presidential Office, and four for spots
on our Board of Directors. These bios follow. I hope they are useful to you in
making your voting decisions later this year. Thank you. Dawn Iacobucci.
PRESIDENTAL CANDIDATES (alphabetically):
Stephen C. Hirtle. Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Information Science, University of Pittsburgh. CSNA member since 1982. Co-chair for CSNA-88 at NYU, and chair of CSNA-93 at Pittsburgh. Session organizer for IFCS-89 at Charlottesville. Referee for Journal of Classification. Member of Psychometric Society and Society for Mathematical Psychology. Research interests: lattice-theoretic models, cluster comparisons, similarity measures, spatial knowledge structures, and applications for cognitive science.
"CSNA has a unique interdisciplinary perspective that needs to be fostered
and promoted among related disciplines. I am interested in expanding our
relationships to include additional topic areas and in expanding our sphere of
influence among classification researchers. We were one of the first
organizations of our size with a strong World Wide Web presence, which
helps our visibility. As we look toward the next 25 years, it is critical that our
annual meetings continue to present a strong scientific program and at the
same time facilitate informal discussions. It is through the strength of our
scientific meetings and publications that a small society such as ours can
continue to prosper."
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Stanley Wasserman. Professor of Psychology, Statistics, and Sociology, and Professor, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois. Previous appointments at Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Minnesota, Columbia University, and the University of Melbourne. Academic background includes Ph.D. (Statistics, 1977), Harvard University; M.S. (Business and Applied Economics, 1973) and B.S. (Economics, 1973), University of Pennsylvania. CSNA member since the mid- 1980s, Member of Board of Directors (1991-present), Secretary/Treasurer (1991- 1994), Chair, Finance Committee (1995-present). Plenary lectures given at CSNA90 and CSNA92, special session organizer, CSNA96; proposed host of CSNA98, joint with the Psychometric Society, at the University of Illinois. Editorial board of a number of journals, including the Journal of the American Statistical Association and Psychometrika. Book Review Editor for Chance. Author of Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Research interests include statistical models for classification and clustering, especially for networks, and methods of categorical data analysis.
"CSNA is a unique professional society, very interdisciplinary, with a
remarkable group of members. This diversity is its strength, and its biggest
asset. In the coming years, it will be important to utilize the interdisciplinary
aspects of the society, as well as the quality of its members, in order to cut
member losses. CSNA has been hurt financially in recent years ---
membership has fallen and expenses have had to be cut. Going to electronic
versions of the CSNA Bibliographic Service (and perhaps the Newsletter as
well) and building our own WWW pages has helped, but more economizing
needs to be done. As President, as I did as Business Manager, I will oversee
future budgets, and will work hard to increase revenues, through
membership drives and continued diversity in presentations at our Annual
Meetings (which have always been one of the best parts of CSNA, and good
sources of revenue). I will ask you for your help in these tasks, by
recommending others for membership and for ideas for future Annual
Meetings, especially for joint meetings with "like- minded" societies. I will
ask you to work with me to bring others into CSNA (especially students and
young researchers) through special topics sessions at our meetings. Better
links to the biomedical areas, marketing, and information science would be
nice to develop. I could see organizing sessions at annual meetings of other
societies (such as the newly formed Mathematical Sociology section of the
American Sociological Association, or ORSA/TIMS) ---the American
Statistical Association has been quite keen on such special sessions at their
annual meetings. The tutorials that we run prior to our own annual
meetings could easily be presented to other societies. And lastly, continued
growth, expansion, and diversity of our outstanding, flagship journal, the
Journal of Classification, can only help publicize and extol CSNA. Overall, I
am very proud of CSNA, and will use my time and energy as President to
make us more visible, and consequently, help put us on a better financial
base."
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BOARD OF DIRECTORS of CSNA candidates (alphabetically):
David Banks. Associate Professor, Department of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon
University. CSNA member for three years; session organizer for CSNA-93
and CSNA-95, and service on the Membership Committee. Essentially an
applied statistician, with odd forays into mathematics, social networks, and
editing the update of the _Encyclopedia of Statistical Sciences_. Member of
the American Statistical Association, SIAM, and the Biometric Society.
Research interests: complex data analysis, debunking TQM, tree-valued
random variables, human rights data, computer-intensive methodologies.
------------
Glenn W. Milligan. Professor and Undergraduate Programs Chair, Fisher
College of Business, The Ohio State University. CSNA member since 1978.
Conference host for CSNA-86 at Ohio State. CSNA Business Manager 1987-
1990. Referee for 20 journals, including the Journal of Classification. Member
of the Psychometric Society, the American Statistical Association, and the
American Society for Quality Control. Research interests in the areas of
classification validation, experimental design, and quality management.
------------
Boris G. Mirkin. Research Associate, DIMACS (Center for Discrete
Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science), Rutgers University.
Director of a PC project for classification-based exploratory data analysis
(ClassMaster, Moscow, Russia). Chair of the Program Committee for two last
Soviet National Conferences on Theory and Practice of Classification (1986,
1990). Referee for Journal of Classification. Research interests include: (a)
mathematical theory for clustering emphasizing mixed data treatment,
interpretation tools, and fast computations; (b) related topics of discrete
mathematics, multivariate statistics, and artificial intelligence; (c) substantive
applications in molecular biology, sociology, and organization design.
Though most part of his work is published in Russian, some of his writing is
available in English, as monographs `Group Choice' (1979) and `Graphs and
Genes' (1984). Professor Mirkin is currently completing a monograph on
cluster analysis.
------------
Pascale Rousseau. Associate professor, Department of Mathematics,
Universite du Quebec a Montreal. CSNA member since 1974. Co-chair for the
joint meeting of the CSNA and the Psychometric Society at Montreal (1982)
and co-chair of the program committee of the joint meeting of the CSNA and
the Psychometric Society at Rutgers (1991). Member of Canadian Statistical
Society and American Statistical Society. Research interests: multivariate
analysis (clustering, discriminant analysis, comparison of hierarchical trees,
categorical data analysis), domain of applications: socio-linguistic, historical
linguistic.
-----------------------------------------------------------
:::::::
From the Newsletter Editor
:::::::
F.R. McMorris
Department of Mathematics
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292
frmcmo01@homer.louisville.edu
(502)852-6826
Phipps Arabie, Editor of the Journal relays the contents of the Second 1995 issue (to be mailed in November). I can't wait to get my copy. The titles look very interesting, as usual.
F. Murtagh and M. Hernandez-Pajares. "The Kohonen self-organizing map method: An assessment."
Serge Joly and Georges Le Calve. "Three-way distances."
Bruno Leclerc. "Minimum spanning trees for tree metrics: abridgements and adjustments."
Boris Mirkin, P. Arabie, & L. J. Hubert. "Additive two-mode clustering: The error-variance approach revisited."
F.-J. Lapointe and P. Legendre. "Comparing comparison tests for dendrograms."
J. Douglas Carroll and James E. Corter. "A graph-theoretic method for organizing overlapping clusters into trees and extended trees."
UPDATE FROM MEL JANOWITZ ABOUT CSNA-NT96:
Here is an update on the current status of the CSNA-NT96 meeting. As you know it will be held at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, June 13- 16, 1995, and will include the traditional short course on exploratory data analysis. I would encourage anyone planning to present a paper to give some thought to letting the organizers have a title, or a statement of intent, or if possible an abstract. The next issue of the Newsletter will contain a more detailed announcement, together with a copy of the registration form. Incidentally, the registration form should also be available on the CSNA WWW page, or by requesting a copy from one of the organizers.
A number of special sessions are in the planning stages. For the CSNA portion of the meeting, they include: Classification in social network analysis (Stanley Wasserman), General consensus theory (Robert C. Powers), Graduate student session (Peter Bryant), Image analysis and estimation (Sridhar Lakshmanan and Anil Jain), Information retrieval and classification (Stephen C, Hirtle), Pathfinder Networks and proximity graphs (Donald Dearholt).
The NT group has discussed sessions on Biological applications of consensus theory, and Reticulate evolution.
Invited speakers will include: Donald Geman of the University of Massachusetts; Bruno Leclerc of C.A.M.S., Paris; Phillipa Pattison of the University of Melbourne; and D. L. Swofford of the Smithsonian Institution. The after dinner speaker will be Herman Friedman, and his topic will be "Classification and clustering: a perspective on applications".
The organizers of the meeting encourage the presentation of contributed papers that cover a wide range of applications and methodology that involve exploratory data analysis viewed in its broadest sense. Papers related to evolution and molecular biology are of particular interest to the numerical taxonomy group. Short abstracts of papers should be sent to the appropriate program chair, as well as any suggestions for symposia, special sessions, topics, panel discussions, requests for further information, or other contributions. The deadline for submission of abstracts is April 15, 1996 (a familiar date to residents of the U.S.). The program chair for the CSNA program is Melvin F. Janowitz, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 USA, telephone (413)-545- 2871, Fax (413)-545-1801, e-mail csna96@math.umass.edu. The program director for the NT meeting is Pierre Legendre, Department de sciences biologiques, Universite de Montreal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3C 3J7, telephone (514)-343-7591, fax (514)-343- 2293, e-mail legendre@ere.umontreal.ca.
So in short, please plan to come!
*****IFCS - 96 KOBE, JAPAN*****
The Fifth Conference of the International Federation of Classification
Societies will meet in Kobe, Japan March 27-30, 1996. For information contact
Prof. Hoboru Ohsumi, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, 4- 6-7,
Minami-Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106, Japan. email: ifcs96@ism.ac.jp
Information is also available via WWW at
http://www.media.cst.nihon-u.ac.jp/IFCS96/
* FEB. 28 - MARCH 1, 1996: International Conference on Conceptual Knowledge Processing at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, Hauptgebaeude, Hochschulstr. 1, Room 223. This 3-day-conference continues a sequence of meetings which started with the `Arbeitstagung Begriffsanalyse' in January 1986 (see Ganter,Wille, Wolff: Beitrage zur Begriffsanalyse, B.I.- Wissenschaftverlag 1987). The announced international conference follows two meetings on `Begriffliche Wissensverarbeitung' which took place in 1994 and 1995 (see Wille, Zickwolff: Begriffliche Wissensverarbeitung: Grundfragen und Aufgaben, B.I.-Wissenschaftsverlag 1994). These meetings have been stimulated by the foundation of the ErnstSchroederZentrum fur Begriffliche Wissensverarbeitung in which scholars from mathematics, computer, information and social sciences combine to advocate and work for a human- centered development and use of tools and media in information and knowledge processing. The 1996 conference shall continue --- on an international level --- the started exchange and discourse about actual research on conceptual knowledge processing. The conference is organized by the Forschungsgruppe Begriffsanalyse at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt in cooperation with the ErnstSchroederZentrum and the International Society of Knowledge Organization (ISKO). It is planned to reserve enough time for discussion and exchange of information during the conference. Courses on Formal Concept Analysis will be offered immediately before the conference (February 26-27, 1996) at the TH Darmstadt. Applications should be sent to: Prof. Dr. Rudolf Wille, FB Mathematik, Technische Hochschule, D--64289 Darmstadt, Schlossgartenstrasse 7 (Phone ++49-6151- 163415, Fax ++49-6151-164011, E-mail: ConKnow@mathematik.th- darmstadt.de). Hotel reservations can be made via the Verkehrsamt Darmstadt,Postfach 110780, D--64283 Darmstadt (Phone ++49-6151-132782).
* MARCH 6 - 8, 1996: 20th Annual Conference of the Gesellshaft fur Klassifikation e.V. at the University of Freiburg. The scientific program will deal with methods and applications in "Classification, Data Analysis and Knowledge Organization" and provide survey lectures as well as special sessions. Interdisciplinary topics will have special priority. For information contact Prof. Dr. Rudiger Klar, Abteilung fur Medizinische Informatik, Universitatsklinikum Freiburg, Stefan-Meier-Str. 26, D-79104 Freiburg, Germany. (Phone +49-761-203-6701, Fax +49-761-201-6711, email gfkl@imbi.uni-freiburg.de)
Rian van Blokland-Vogelesang
SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research
P.O.Box 170
2260 AD Leidschendam
The Netherlands
Blokland@SWOV.nl
C. Brand, The .g Factor: General Intelligence and its Implications, New York: Wiley, 1995, pp. 175, #12.95, ISBN 0471-96070-5 (pbk); #24.95, ISBN 0-471- 96069-1 (hbk).
D.S. Bridge and G.B. Mehta, Representations of Preference Orderings, New York: Springer, Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Vol. 422, 1995, pp. 165, $23.-. ISBN 3-540-58839-6.
T.F. Cox and M.M.A. Cox, Multidimensional Scaling, London (UK): Chapman and Hall, Monographs on Statistics and Applied Probability, Vol. 59, 1994, pp. 225, $16.-. ISBN 0-412-49120-6 (incl. 3.5" diskette).
D. Edwards, Introduction in Graphical Modelling, New York:Springer Verlag, Texts in Statistics, 1995, pp. 280, $39.-. ISBN 0-387-94483-4.(incl. 3.5" diskette).
H.U. Gerber, Life Insurance Mathematics (2nd ed.), New York: Springer, 1995, pp. 200, $36.-. ISBN 3-540-58858-2.
H. Gzyl, The Method of Maximum Entropy, Singapore: Word Scientific Publishing, Series: Advances in Mathematics for Applied Sciences, Vol. 29, 1995, pp. 150, $48.-. ISBN 981-02-1812-5.
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M.J. Kolen and R.L. Brennan, Test Equating Methods and Practices, New York: Springer, 1995, pp. 340, $44.95. ISBN 0-387-94486-9.
V.G. Kulkarni, Modeling and Analysis of Stochastic Systems, London (UK): Chapman and Hall, 1995, pp. 630, $57.95. ISBN 0-412-04991-0.
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G.J. Olsder (Ed.), New Trends in Dynamic Games and Applications, (Series: Annals of the International Society of Dynamic Games, Vol. 3), Boston: Birkhauser Verlag, 1995, pp.490, SFR 148.- (ca. $74.-). ISBN 0-8176-3812- 1.
G. Owen, Game Theory (3rd ed.), San Diego (Cal): Academic Press, 1995, pp.150, $42.-, ISBN 0-12-531151-6.
Z. Pawlak, Rough Sets: Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning about Data, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, Series: Theory and Decision Library, Series D: System Theory, Knowledge Engineering and Problem Solving, 1995, pp. 240, $106.- ISBN 0-7923-1472-7.
C.P. Robert, The Bayesian Choice: A Decision-Theoretic Motivation, New York: Springer, 1994, pp. 436, $45.-. ISBN 3-540-94296-3 (covers Stein effects, Gibbs sampling).
Sir Michael Rutter (Chairman), Genetics of Criminal and Antisocial Behavior: Ciba Foundation Symposium 194, New York: Wiley, 1995, pp.300, #49.95. ISBN 0471-95719-4.
E.A. Weitzman, Computer Methods for Qualitative Data Analysis: A Software Sourcebook, London (UK):Sage, 1995, pp. 384, #44.95, ISBN 0-8039- 5536-7 (hbk); #19.95 ISBN 0-8039-5537-5 (pbk).
T.H. Wonnacott and R.J. Wonnacott, Introductory Statistics (5th ed.), New York: Wiley, pp. 720, $25.-, ISBN 0471-61518-8.