Phipps Arabie, President
Mel Janowitz, President-Elect
Mike Larsen, Newsletter Editor

Classification Society of North America (CSNA) Newsletter

January 2005, Issue #67

	Notes from the Current and Former Newsletter Editors
	Notes from the President, Secretary, and Webmaster
	CSNA Election Results and Board of Directors
	CSNA Annual Conference Information
	Conference Listings
	Journal Information

This and previous issues of the newsletter can be read online through the CSNA web page ( http://www.cs-na.org) and here . All suggestions are welcome! (larsen at iastate dot edu).

Notes from the Current and Former Newsletter Editors

From Jennifer Pittman

      A New Year and a New Editor

      This edition of the CSNA newsletter marks the close of my tenure as Editor and Mike Larsen has gratiously suggested that I say (type) a few words to mark the occasion. I can hardly believe that it's been 3-1/2 years since I took over the reins from Bill Shannon and started reporting on all of the happenings of CSNA. And what a wonderful trip it has been!

      I would like to thank all of the members of CSNA for their contributions to the newsletter over the years. In particular, I would like to thank Bill Shannon, Stan Sclove, Fionn Murtagh, David Dubin, and David Banks for their help and support. I only ask that you provide Mike with the same help and support that you so willingly gave to me. Mike is very organized and energetic, and I'm certain that with your contributions he would do a terrific job as newsletter editor.

      I intend to remain an active and enthusiastic member of CSNA and wish all of you a very Happy New Year.

     Best,
     Jennifer

From Mike Larsen

      Greetings and Happy New Year!

      Let me be among the first to publicly thank Jennifer for her three and one-half years of service as newsletter editor for CSNA. Her efforts have kept us informed and connected. I will endeavor to continue the newsletter with the quality and style she brought to the effort.

      A newsletter is only as good as the information that is available for content. Therefore, I ask you the members of CSNA to send me announcements, notices, facts and figures, suggestions, etc. for news. My email address is larsen at iastate dot edu. Feel free to write about anything you think might be of interest to your fellow CSNA members. I look forward to working with the members and leadership of CSNA to bring you an informative and interesting newsletter.

      Best regards,
      Mike

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Notes from the President, Secretary, and Webmaster

Report from the President, Phipps Arabie

Greetings and Best wishes to all belonging to and affiliated with CSNA, as well as to the many I hope are considering joining us. My communications with many of you have been minimal and tardy because of medical problems here, but it will be good to see you at the meeting, energetically being organized by Bill Shannon, and it will be joint with the Interface Foundation, which concentrates on the interface between computing and statistics. The meeting is to be held at the Washington University Medical School, preceded by short courses on Wednesday, June 8. Further details are to be found elsewhere in this Newsletter. The IFCS 2006 Meeting will be held in Ljubljana (again, see details below). Jim Rohlf and Buck McMorris are CSNA's two elected representatives to IFCS's Council; at the end of 2005 when his term expires, Buck's successor will be decided upon in a forthcoming IFCS election. (Only the larger Societies like ours get two seats on IFCS's Council, thanks to a change in by-laws at IFCS 2004.)

I would like to thank CSNA President-Elect Mel Janowitz (Rutgers-DIMACS) and Business Manager Stanley Sclove (University of Illinois at Chicago) for taking over my responsibilities several times when health hampered me. These two officers really are most dedicated to CSNA and deserve gratitude from all of us!

Dean Buck McMorris did a spectacularly good job of running last summer's joint IFCS 2005 and CSNA 2005 meeting at his home base, the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Also, David Banks seemed to be ubiquitous and characteristically conscientious throughout the meeting.

Although it is unusual for CSNA to issue a proceedings volume for CSNA meetings, David deserves special kudos for being lead co-editor, delivering the volume before the meeting actually began. Incidentally, the volume appeared in the Springer series Studies in Classification, Data Analysis, and Knowledge Organization. Among other titles in this series are the annual proceedings of the German- speaking Classification Society (Gesellschaft fuer Klassifikation). A few extra copies are left and can be purchased (50 USD) from the Business Manager, Stan Sclove. There are also copies of the 2004 bibliographic survey CD-ROM containing the usual SERVICE, and four entire books:Clustering Algorithms (1975) by John A. Hartigan;Information Retrieval (First Edition 1975, Second Edition 1979) by C. J. van Rijsbergen; Automatische Klassifikation (1974) [in German] by H. H. Bock; Algorithms for Clustering Data (1988) by A.K. Jain and R.C. Dubes, all for just 11 [eleven] USD. These prices include shipping.

Although the Nominations Committee selected four candidates to replace Herbie Lee and David Dubin, whose terms on the Board of Directors have expired after exemplary service on the Board, only two of the four, Bob Powers (University of Louisville) and Doug Steinley (University of Missouri) agreed to run. (The other two putative nominees as well as several others contacted said they already had too many commitments.) The staggered terms of Board members are for three years.

Dave Dubin is to be thanked for taking over as CSNA's new Webmaster (see his report elsewhere in this Newsletter), as Steve Hirtle is for initiating it and serving so well in that capacity. Similarly, Jim Rohlf deserves high praise for the many years he has meticulously watched over the class-l listserver, as he continues to do. Perhaps his tasks can eventually be merged with that of the Webmaster and then move a renamed class-l to be under the cs-na.org domain.

Similarly, Jennifer Pittman (Duke University) is to be commended for her years as energetic Editor of CSNA's Newsletter. Michael Larsen (Iowa State University) has already begun the difficult job of being her successor.

Phipps Arabie, CSNA President

From the Secretary, Stan Sclove

Hello, CSNA members,

If you have not already done so, give yourself a belated HOLIDAY GIFT right now, and renew your MEMBERSHIP !! We look forward to your continued membership !! Membership form (HTM) Membership form (DOC)

We have a very special Annual Meeting coming up in June, jointly with the Interface Foundation (interface between computing and statistics) at Washington University Medical School, St. Louis. See http://ilya.wustl.edu/if_csna_2005_meeting/ for the latest information.

The following items from IFCS2004/Chicago, the 2004 Biennial Meeting of the International Federation of Classification Societies (see http://www.classification-society.org/ifcs04/), are still available, in limited quantities:

Proceedings Volume from IFCS2004/Chicago at $50 for processing, shipping and handling
The bibliographic CD, also containing out-of-print books by Hartigan, Bock, Jain and Dubes, and van Rijsbergen, at a price of $11.

Order Form (HTM)

Best . . . Stan
Stan Sclove, CSNA Secretary/Treasurer

From the Webmaster, Dave Dubin

Updates on the CSNA Website.

The CSNA Website is in the process of moving from the University of Pittsburgh server, to a new host at the University of Illinois ISRL (which also hosts the IFCS website). The transition should be complete in early February, and with very little disruption.

I will be working with Stephen Hirtle to set up forwarding from the Pitt server to UIUC, to give other websites plenty of time to update their links. No change will be necessary if you are using the www.cs-na.org address. If your bookmark or link to the site begins www.pitt.edu, it will continue to work for some time, but plan on changing it to www.cs-na.org when you get a chance.

In addition to the server change, I am experimenting with some dynamically generated and interactive content for both the CSNA and IFCS websites. I plan to make occasional announcements (on the sites and in the newsletter) inviting members to try out a demo or survey. They may seem trivial, but your participation will help me work out some bugs before we attempt a more complex enhancement to the site.

Dave Dubin, CSNA Webmaster

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CSNA Election Results and Board of Directors

An election was held at the end of last year to replace the two Directors, Herbie Lee of University of California at Santa Cruz and David Dubin of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whose terms expired at the end of 2004. Dave takes over from Stephen Hirtle as Webmaster for CSNA. Many thanks to Herbie, Dave, and Steve for their service to CSNA! The Nominating Committee consisted of Phipps Arabie (Chair), Doug Carroll, Mel Janowitz, Herbie Lee, Jacqueline Meulman, and Stan Sclove (ex officio, as Secretary/Treasurer).

The following individuals are members of the CSNA board of directors.

There are sixteen positions: four officers, six elected directors, four editors, and two ex officio IFCS representatives. The IFCS representatives are non-voting members of the board.
For matters regarding the Journal of Classification, please use: joc at fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Representative to the IFCS council are elected by the Board. By custom, the terms are overlapping terms of four years.

Welcome to the new board members and directors!

OFFICER DIRECTORS

OFFICE	OFFICER	TERM	E-MAIL
Past Pres.	Stanley Wasserman	2004-2005	stanwass at indiana.edu
Pres.	Phipps Arabie	2004-2005	arabie at andromeda.rutgers.edu
Pres.-Elect	Melvin F. Janowitz	2004-2005	melj at dimax.rutgers.edu
Secy/Treas.	Stanley L. Sclove	2003-2005	slsclove at uic.edu

ELECTED DIRECTORS

OFFICE	OFFICER	TERM	E-MAIL
Director	Carolyn J. Anderson	2003-2005	cja at uiuc.edu
Director	Kert Viele	2003-2005	viele at ms.uky.edu
Director	Michael Brusco	2004-2006	mbrusco at garnet.acns.fsu.edu
Director	Wm. D. Shannon	2004-2006	wshannon at wustl.edu
Director	Robert C Powers	2005-2007	rcpowe01 at louisville.edu
Director	Douglas Steinley	2005-2007	steinleyd at missouri.edu

EDITOR DIRECTORS

OFFICE	OFFICER	TERM	E-MAIL
J. of Cl.	Willem Heiser	(indefinite)	heiser at fsw.leidenuniv.nl
CSNA Service	Fionn Murtagh	(indefinite)	fmurtagh at acm.org
Newsletter	Michael D. Larsen	(indefinite)	larsen at iastate.edu
Webmaster	David S. Dubin	(indefinite)	ddubin at uiuc.edu

REPRESENTATIVES TO IFCS COUNCIL

OFFICE	OFFICER	TERM	E-MAIL
IFCS Rep	F. R. Buck McMorris	2002-2005	mcmorris at iit.edu
IFCS Rep	F. James Rohlf	2004-2007	rohlf at life.bio.sunysb.edu

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CSNA Annual Conference Information

A note from Bill Shannon

We are pleased to announce the plans for this years Annual CSNA Meeting, held jointly with the Interface Foundation of North America, in St. Louis are going great. This years theme is Clustering and Classification and is being organized by Bill Shannon, David Banks, and Rob Culverhouse.

The updated web site for the conference is
http://ilya.wustl.edu/if_csna_2005_meeting/

where information on invited sessions, short courses, keynote speakers, registration, etc. can be found. There is still plenty of time to join us for this exciting conference:
Abstract and Registration Deadline is 4/9/05
In addition to four excellent short courses, a list of invited sessions covering a wide range of topics, we are having several Keynote Speakers including CR Rao, David Scott, Sid Chib, Jerry Friedman, Jon Kettering, and John Quackenbush.

We hope you will make every effort to join us for what looks like a fabulous and exciting conference covering cutting edge methodology and applications. Please feel free to contact Bill Shannon (wshannon at wustl.edu) with any questions or comments.

Conference Listings

CSNA annual meeting, joint with Interface

Joint Annual Meeting of the Interface and the Classification Society of North America: Theme: Clustering and Classification.
http://ilya.wustl.edu/if_csna_2005_meeting/.
Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, June 8, 2005 - June 12, 2005.
See above for more information.

GfKl 2005

The 29th Annual Conference of the German Classification Society (GfKl).
http://omen.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/itikmd/gfk12005/
Magdeburg, Germany, Otto-von-Guericke-University, March 9 - 11, 2005.

ASMDA 2005

XI^th International Symposium on Applied Stochastic Models and Data Analysis
http://asmda2005.enst-bretagne.fr
Brest, France - May 17-20, 2005.

CLADAG 2005

Fifth Biennial Scientific Meeting of the Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statistical Society
http://www.cladag2005.unipr.it/indexen.html
Faculty of Economics, University of Parma, Parma, Italy, June 6 - 8, 2005.

7th ISKO-Spain 2005

7th ISKO-Spain Conference, The human dimension of knowledge organization
http://bd.ub.es/isko2005/en/
Departament de Biblioteconomia i Documentaci� de la Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, July 6-8, 2005.

ACIDCA-ICMI 2005

Second International Conference on Machine Intelligence
http://www.acidca-icmi2005.org
Tozeur, Tunisia, November 5-7, 2005.

IFCS2006: Slovenia

IFCS2006 conference on DATA ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION,
International Federation of Classification Societies,
Ljubljana, Slovenia, July 26-29, 2006.

The IFCS2006 conference DATA ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION will be held from July 26 to 29, 2006 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. A opening welcome ceremony and reception will be held on the evening of July 25th. Short courses will be scheduled for July 26th. The conference proogram will take place on July 27-29. On Saturday, July 29th, the conference will end with a closing ceremony. The orgranizer of the conference is Anuska Ferligoj. Anyone interested in presenting a short course during the conference, organizing an invited session, or obtaining any information about the conference in Ljubljana should contact her at the address below. The conference web site is being designed and will be ready in a few weeks. Watch for an announcement.

      Anuska Ferligoj
      Faculty of Social Sciences
      University of Ljubljana
      Kardeljeva pl. 5
      1000 Ljubljana
      Slovenia
      e-mail address: Anuska.ferligoj at fdv.uni-lj.si

Other Listings

The IFCS conference page: http://www.classification-society.org/ifcsconf.html

American Statistical Association meetings page: http://www.amstat.org/meetings

The International Biometric Society conferences page: http://www.tibs.org/conferences.htm

Institute of Mathematical Statistics meetings page: http://www.imstat.org/meetings/

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Journal Information

The web page for the Journal of Classification is http://www.pitt.edu/~csna/joc.html.
Volume 21, Number 2, completed the publication of the journal for 2004.

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Other Information

IFCS

International Federation of Classification Society Homepage: http://www.classification-society.org/

Award announcement

User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction: The Journal of Personalization Research (UMUAI) is pleased to announce that the paper "Interactive Information Retrieval Using Clustering and Spatial Proximity" by Anton Leuski and James Allan, UMUAI 14(2-3), pp. 259-288, June 2004, has been elected as the winner of the 2004 James Chen Annual Award for Best Journal Article. It was selected based on nominations from journal reviewers, editorial board members and guest editors, and a subsequent comparative review of the shortlisted papers by an award committee.

The UMUAI annual best paper award has been donated by the Chen family in commemoration of James R. Chen, a creative researcher in the area of user modeling and information retrieval, and twice a UMUAI author. It carries a cash prize of U.S. $1,000.

UMUAI provides an interdisciplinary forum for the dissemination of new research results on interactive computer systems that can be adapted or adapt themselves to their current users, and on the role of user models in the adaptation process. Based on the ISI impact factor, the journal currently ranks #6 among 451 Computer Science journals. More information including a free electronic copy of the Tenth Anniversary Issue is available from http://www.umuai.org or the publisher's website at http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/0924-1868

Alfred Kobsa, Editor
User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction: The Journal of Personalization Research
http://www.umuai.org

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About CSNA

The WWW and ascii version of the CSNA Newsletter is made available as a service of the Classification Society of North America (web site: http://www.cs-na.org ). Information on becoming a member of CSNA is available at the CSNA website.

CSNA Webmaster: Dave Dubin, ddubin at uiuc dot edu Newsletter editor: Mike Larsen, larsen at iastate dot edu

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