Members of the Section for Statistical Programmers and Analysts (SSPA) are looking forward to being in Montréal and participating in this year’s JSM with Continuing Education courses, roundtable discussions, and various oral and poster presentations of interest to statistical programmers and the general statistical community. The section also will sponsor multiple presentations on Big Data and how it is affecting the statistical profession.

Continuing Education Short Courses

• Practical Bayesian Computation
• Techniques for Simulating Data in SAS

Invited Posters, Invited Sessions, and Topic-Contributed Sessions

• The Emerging Role of the Data Scientist (Invited Poster)
• The Variety of Data Scientists (Invited Poster)
• A Little Goes a Long Way: Efficient Habits of the Project-Juggling SAS Programmer (Invited Poster)
• Transitioning to Big Data: What Every Statistical Programmer/Analyst Should Know (Invited Session)
• Opening the Doors to Open Source Programming in Drug Development (Invited Session)
• The World of Statistical Analysis Professionals (Topic-Contributed Session)
• Hitting the Target in Hospital Profiling: The AHRQ Quality Indicators (Topic-Contributed Session)
• Statistical Methods for Assessing Hospital Performance: Risk-Adjusted Clinical Outcome Reporting (Topic-Contributed Session)

P.M. Roundtables

• Allocating Programming Resources in a Dynamic Environment
• Engineering Scientific Solutions

SSPA also will sponsor a contributed session that contains seven oral presentations focusing on the use of commercial and other software for report generation and improved estimation, as well as four contributed posters that will discuss survival analysis; logistic regression; modeling correlated variables in R; and integrating Excel, Access, and SAS.

In addition to the sessions, SSPA will hold a business meeting. Meet section members and officers and learn about newly developed programs and opportunities for travel grants.

If you’re a student, make sure to attend the JSM Student Mixer on August 5 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 pm. It is an easy way to meet other students, and one of our officers will be there to answer questions about SSPA and the role of statistical programmers in early-career jobs.

Students also are encouraged to apply for the section’s student travel award to pay the registration fees for students and recent graduates who want to attend an ASA conference. Details and an application are available here.

Drop by the section’s table in the registration area to say hello and get details about upcoming webinars, technical skills, travel grants, and openings for officers. To volunteer at the table, visit the online schedule.

About SSPA

SSPA was established on January 1, 2009, and has more than 900 members. The section provides a venue for statistical programmers and analysts to discuss common interests, formulate strategies, share experiences and challenges, offer support, and gain increased awareness of the broader statistical community. It offers a variety of webinars throughout the year. If your work involves programming or managing programmers, SSPA is the place for you.