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Highlights of the JSM 2018 Program

Christian Léger, JSM 2018 Program Chair

Set in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, from July 29 through August 2, JSM 2018 promises to be a fantastic meeting. With your help, the JSM Program Committee has prepared a wonderful program with a total of 681 sessions, including four plenary sessions, 178 invited sessions, 167 topic-contributed sessions, 181 contributed sessions, 26 speed sessions, 40 contributed poster sessions, and 76 roundtables for a total of 2,480 individual paper presentations, 509 speed presentations, 437 individual poster presentations, and more than 100 discussants. Although it is too early to tell, the number of submissions indicates JSM 2018 will be one of the largest JSM meetings ever.

Such a large meeting sometimes discourages potential participants. There are, after all, between 41 and 43 parallel sessions in each non-plenary time slot from Sunday, July 29, at 2 p.m. through Thursday, August 2, at 10:30 a.m. The flipside is that every participant is sure to find exciting sessions in all time slots from Sunday to Thursday! But to take full advantage of what JSM offers, it is important to plan which sessions to attend.

Consulting the online program is the best way to select the sessions of interest, since you can construct your own program and eventually use the mobile application to consult it. But to help you plan, I will highlight some sessions in the next few paragraphs.

Plenary Sessions

Let me begin with the plenary sessions. The first one is the ASA President’s Invited Address on Monday, July 30, at 4 p.m. On Tuesday, July 31, at 4 p.m., the Deming Lecture, Improving the Quality and Value of Statistical Information: Fourteen Questions on Management, will be delivered by John L. Eltinge of the US Census Bureau. Tuesday night at 8 p.m., Lisa LaVange will present the ASA President’s Address. Finally, the COPSS awards will be presented on Wednesday, August 1, at 4 p.m., followed by the Fisher Lecture—The Future: Stratified Micro-Randomized Trials with Applications in Mobile Health—given by Susan Murphy of Harvard University.

Opening Mixer

Sunday night, as you mingle with colleagues and friends during the JSM Opening Mixer, you won’t want to miss the opportunity to learn about various topics during the invited poster session, when 40 electronic posters will be presented near the vendors in the EXPO.

Public Lecture

This year, JSM is innovating by presenting a public lecture to raise the profile of statistical sciences in the community hosting the meeting. Jeff Rosenthal of the University of Toronto will deliver the first JSM public lecture, Born on Friday the Thirteenth: The Curious World of Probabilities.

Held on Monday night to accommodate high-school math teachers and the general public—its principal audience—the public lecture is also open to JSM attendees who may be interested.

Introductory Overview Lectures

Introductory overview lectures are among the most popular sessions at JSM. They are high-quality introductions to timely and important statistical topics of interest to broad JSM attendees. This year, JSM will host six. The first—The Deep Learning Revolution, taking place Sunday, July 29, at 2 p.m.—will explore this machine learning tool that has proven to be extremely useful in several applications and has witnessed an absolute explosion of interest.

Then, Sunday, July 29, at 4 p.m., Examining What and How We Teach at All Levels: Key Ideas to Ensure the Progress and Relevance of Statistics will highlight changes in introductory-level material and both undergraduate and graduate programs in statistics, biostatistics, and data science at a time when demand for our profession continues to grow and the emergence of data science has invigorated both industry and academia.

On Monday, July 30, at 8:30 a.m., data science leaders from major technological firms will demystify real-world data science applications at scale and illustrate how to become an excellent data scientist, build a high-impact data science team, design data science curriculum, and lead with statistics in Leading Data Science: Talent, Strategy, and Impact.

Multivariate Data Modeling with Copulas on Monday, July 30, at 10:30 a.m., will focus on the fundamental principles of copulas and copula models, one of the most powerful and appealing ways to account for dependence in multivariate data, and provide concrete illustrations of its use in finance, insurance, biostatistics, and environmental sciences.

On Tuesday, July 31, at 8:30 a.m., Reproducibility, Efficient Workflows, and Rich Environments will explore the need for reproducibility of results from modern data analysis and how getting the most of rich computing environments can help build efficient workflows and organize computations to encourage validity, reproducibility, and collaborative sharing.

Finally, on Wednesday, August 1, at 8:30 a.m., The Statistical and Data Revolution in the Social Sciences will highlight new statistical methods for three areas of social science—demography, social network analysis, and criminology—in which the impact of statistics has been expanding rapidly, spurred by a huge expansion in available social science data, new kinds of social science data, and the establishment of several interdisciplinary centers and institutes in US universities.

Memorial Sessions

Every year, we remember the contributions and personalities of extraordinary statisticians who died in the recent past through memorial sessions. This year, we will salute Stephen E. Fienberg (Sunday, July 29, 2 p.m.), Charles Stein (Monday, July 30, 2 p.m.), Ingram Olkin (Tuesday, July 31, 2 p.m.), Alastair Scott (Thursday, August 2, 8:30 a.m.), and Joseph Hilbe (Thursday, August 2, 10:30 a.m.).

Journal Sessions

Several journals have invited sessions to highlight some of the best papers they publish. This year, the following journals have sessions scheduled:

• Journal of Statistics Education, Sunday, July 29, 2 p.m.
• JASA Theory and Methods Monday, July 30, 8:30 a.m.
• Annals of Applied Statistics, Monday, July 30, 2 p.m.
• Technometrics, Tuesday, July 31, 8:30 a.m.
• Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics, Tuesday, July 31, 2 p.m.
• Statistics Surveys, Wednesday, August 1, 8:30 a.m.
• Statistica Sinica, Wednesday, August 1, 10:30 a.m.
• JASA Applications and Case Studies, Wednesday, August 1, 2 p.m.
• CHANCE, Thursday, August 2, 8:30 a.m.

Late-Breaking Sessions

Up to two late-breaking sessions may be added to the program for Monday, July 30, at 2 p.m. and Tuesday, July 31, at 10:30 a.m.

Speed Sessions

One way to diminish the number of parallel sessions is to encourage researchers to present in a speed session. Such a presentation is delivered in two parts: a four-minute oral advertisement for the topic in a session with 19 others on a similar theme, followed by a 45-minute electronic poster in a later session. This year, we have increased the number of speed sessions from 18 to 26. I invite you to consider attending at least one such session. You may like them and consider submitting your research to a speed session next year.

The theme of the meeting is #LeadWithStatistics and, as you will discover throughout the program, our field is healthier than ever and full of energetic members ready to lead with statistics. On behalf of the JSM Program Committee, I wish you a wonderful JSM 2018 in Vancouver. We hope you will learn from and enjoy it as much as we did preparing it!