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Senator Moynihan to Address ASA Members
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) has been invited by the American Statistical Association to give the 1998 President's Invited Address at this year's annual meeting in Dallas. The Association's Joint Statistical Meetings will be held from August 9th through August 13th. The title of Senator Moynihan's address is "Data and Dogma in Public Policy." The Senator will speak on the U.S. decennial census and census adjustment, the status of government statistics programs (focusing on the Consumer Price Index), and the Senator's bill S.1404, "The Federal Statistical System Act of 1997." The purpose of this bill was to establish a Commission on Statistical Policy to study whether a single, centralized entity (like Canada's) should replace the present U.S. system. Senator Moynihan is scheduled to deliver his address on Monday, August 10th, at 4:00 PM.
There will be several invited paper sessions about data quality, data mining, and related topics at this year's annual meeting.
For information about the ASA's 1998 annual meeting, including papers, luncheons, and special interest group functions, go to the Web site (www.amstat.org/meetings/jsm/1998/).
IEEE Spectrum EDA Article: Data Quality Ignored?
An article in the July issue of IEEE Spectrum explores exploratory data analysis (EDA) as a research tool for engineers and scientists. Exploratory data analysis was first described by Dr. John Tukey in his 1977 book, Exploratory Data Analysis.
According to the Spectrum article, essential features of exploratory data analysis include: emphasis on visual examination of data, real-time updates of all plots and calculations as changes occur in the underlying data or analysis parameters, dynamic linking of every plot to every other plot, rapid parceling of the data using various types of linked plots, graceful accomodation of missing or "bad" data. At the core of the packages are data visualizations that change in real time in accordance with analytical conditions chosen by the investigator. According to the Spectrum article, what distinguishes EDA from traditional graphing programs is the EDA plots are dynamically linked in real time according to conditions chosen by the researcher. Data visualization in this context need not refer only to plots whose axes represent actual spatial dimensions. Any type of multidimensional data may be represented.
The Spectrum article was written by John V. James, a senior technical specialist at the Ford Motor Company's Scientific Research Laboratory. The experiment used in the article involves misfires in V-8 automotive engines manufactured by Ford. (The Ford Motor Company developed the V-8 automotive engine almost 70 years ago.)
The article assumes data used in its analyses are of high quality, assumes that analysts choose relevant data for analysis, and assumes that exploratory data analysis is applicable for the experiment and the data used in the experiment. The article appears on page 58 of the July IEEE Spectrum.
Economist Claims News Quality Declining
According to The Economist, news quality has declined in Europe and America during the past decade. At the same time, news organizations have changed the focus of the news - from places and events to people (especially celebrities) and human interest. And there is significantly more news programming and more news sources than existed five years ago.
The Economist compared the Times of London of a hundred years ago to today's. On a typical day in 1898, the Times of London carried dozens of columns of foreign news, domestic news, useful knowledge, and book reviews in its first pages. Today, the Times carries an assortment of domestic news and a few foreign reports focusing on celebrities and heads of state. It appears to The Economist that newspapers that used to be full of politics and economics are now thick with celebrities and sports.
Morerover, readers and viewers have a much larger selection of news sources than existed five years ago. Television viewers have dozens of news sources available via cable, satellites, and broadcast. Internet users can have dozens more, depending on how much time, effort, and subscriber fees they are willing to spend. And dozens of new specialty news magazines are finding niche audiences.
The Economist concludes that in the competition for readers and viewers, news sources that concentrate on people, human interest, and sports are winning audience, while traditional news sources that concentrate on politics and world events are losing audience. While politics and world events may be dull, they are ever-changing. On the other hand, news organizations chasing celebrities are often forced to pour resources into the same old story. Unfortunately, a core group of devotees who "follow" a celebrity may have more influence on a news network's executives than a larger audience of easily-bored viewers who are overwhelmed with data about an international peace-keeping mission. The Economist's articles appear in the July 4th-10th issue and begin on page 13.