COMPSTAT 2004, 16th Symposium of IASC
PRAGUE, August 23-27, 2004

AWARDS

ERS IASC AWARD MATHEMATICA AWARD ASC POSTER AWARD

ERS IASC YOUNG RESEARCHERS AWARD

To promote the participation of young researchers, ERS IASC will offer three prizes, each worth of 500, - Euro (five hundred Euro), for the three best contributions submitted by young participants (upper age limit 35 years on August 27, 2004). The SPC of the COMPSTAT 2004 symposium will take responsibility for the choice of prize winners and the chairman of the SPC will ask the chairman of the BoD for formal approval. The prizes will be presented by the SPC chairman and the chairman of BoD ERS during the closing session. It is not possible to split the prizes. If there are two or more authors of the prize-winning contribution, then all must fulfil the age limit and they will receive only one prize.


The jury of the ERS IASC YOUNG RESEARCHERS AWARD formed by: Tomas Aluja (chairman elect of the BoD), Jaromir Antoch (chairman of the Local Organizing Committee) and Roberta Sicialiano (Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University Federico II. of Naples, Italy)

Appraise the whole papers presented by young participants of COMPSTAT 2004, according the following criteria: Papers should have some methodological innovation in the own topic of the paper, they should have a clear statistical computing content, they should be applied to solve real problems, showing the potentiality of joining the computing capabilities with the statistical methodology to solve actual problems, and for the clearness of the presentation.

Among the papers in contention, some excel and among them we recognise the value of:

  1. Daniel Hlubinka, of the Charles Universty of Prague (Czech Republic), for his paper about Growth curve approach to profiles of atmospheric radiation, finding a suitable model for the measured radiation in atmosphere related to altitude, for the integration of different disciplines, statistical modelling and numeric calculus, the high level showed and the obtained results.
  2. Ilona Krasznahorkay, of the University of Debrecen (Hungary), for her paper Stochastic search on decision trees, for an interesting bridge between the computationally intensive MCMC methods and theoretical bacground applied in the field of decision trees, a hot topic of these days./li>
  3. Jessica Tressou, of the INRA-INA-PG (France), for her paper Double Monte-Carlo simulations in food risk assessment, evaluating the probability of exposure to a particular food contaminant over one week exceeding the tolerance level. For the theoretical results derived and their inherent interest.

MATHEMATICA AWARD

Wolfram Research, the makers of Mathematica, and Elkan Ltd., the distributor of Mathematica for Czecho-Slovakia have kindly donated three copies of Mathematica for Students, which will be awarded to the three best contributions using symbolical mathematical software submitted by students (students include PhD and doctorate students). The prizes will be presented by the SPC chairman and the Elkan representative during the closing session.


The jury of the Mathematika awards was happy to see so many well prepared, beautiful and clear posters. They also found that their assignment: 'To award the posters with the best use of symbolic computations' was very difficult to fulfill, as the use of symbolic computation was almost absent from the posters. Still, the installation of this award is very important for computational statistics, as it will undoubtfully provide a stimulus to better consider the very important advances in the art of symbolic computation.

However, this has caused the jury to readdress the criterium for the awards and to change it appropriately according to the findings reported above. This resulted in the use of 'algorithmic innovation' rather than 'symbolic computation' as the major guiding key word. Additionally, we decided to rule out for the awards those posters that had already received another prize.

With these considerations in mind, we are happy to announce that the winners of the mathematica awards are, in alphabetical order:

  1. Markovsky, I., A. Kukush, and S. van Huffel: Consistent estimation of an ellipsoid with known center.
  2. Novotny P. Optimal approach to data segmentation.
  3. Sanchez-Borrego I.R. et al. A procedure for solving the problem of estimating the regression function with jump points.
The jury
Dee Denteneer and Daniel Hlubinka

ASC POSTER AWARD

Following the involvement of ASC in the 1998 Compstat conference in Bristol, the ASC committee offered to fund a prize to encourage participants presenting material through posters to give more attention to the design and presentation aspects of their work. Prizes were awarded at Compstat in 2000 and 2002, and will be offered at Compstat 2004 and other appropriate conferences.

In the past the standard of presentation at statistical conferences (including Compstat) has often been rather poor, consisting of little more that a (rather long) paper pinned on a display board. Some presenters about design, but these are the minority. This is in contrast with some other disciplines, where considerable care is paid to the production of most of the posters, often the only form of presentation available to the majority of authors.

A poster represents an opportunity that is different from either a printed contribution to a proceedings volume or a verbal presentation. There are two major differences:

  • The display space is 2-dimensional, so it gives an opportunity to present material in a non-linear way.
  • The audience usually browses posters, rather than selecting specific ones in advance (as they do with verbal presentation in parallel sessions), so catching attention from a distance is important.

    • It is not generally necessary to include detailed information in a poster - if a reader is interested they can always be directed to technical details. Rather the objective is to capture the attention of the reader and communicate enough information for them to recognise whether they are interested or not.

    Posters are judged on the quality of their design and their effectiveness at communicating their message. Three specific factors are assessed:

  • The overall design of the poster and its impact from a distance,
  • The overall logical structure of the message being conveyed by the poster, and;
  • The choice of material (type and quantity) within the poster.
    • The quality of the substantive content of the poster is not considered as a factor.

    The prize for a competition is usually Pounds 100 (Euro 150). Judging is done by a small group representing ASC and the conference organisers. The judges independently assess all the posters and then meet together to identify a winner and any other posters deserving of particular mention.


    There were 160 posters presented at Compstat, in two sessions. The judges were:

  • Andrew Westlake, representing the ASC

  • Pilar Munoz, representing the IASC European Board

  • Josef Tvrdik, representing the Compstat Local Organisers

    • The judges viewed the posters independently, and then came together to reach a decision about the prize. The improvement in quality noted in Berlin seems to be continuing, perhaps the result of better publicity to the authors of the existence of the prize. Many of the authors seemed to have made some specific effort to respond to the challenge of the prize, by introducing eye-catching components or by using the two-dimensional space. However, there are still none that reach the highest standards seen at some conferences in other disciplines.

    Only a small number of posters were in contention for the prize, and the judges were unanimous in agreeing to award to prize to:

    1. Oleg Nenadic, Walter Zucchini, Daniel Adler, Guenther Kratz, Computational issues in creating an online atlas.

    This poster has a good initial impact, and is above average in all other respects. For details see.
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