Professor adrian bowman
Department of Statistics, University of Glasgow, Scotland
Website: http://www.stats.gla.ac.uk/~adrian/
OZCOTS2008 Presentation: Statistical cartoons: the role of graphics in understanding statistics
Adrian is an internationally respected statistician and researcher who has also been a leading innovator in statistics education for twenty years. He directs one of the principal nodes of the Higher Education Academy MSOR (Maths, Stats and OR) network. Many of the activities of the Glasgow node of this network provides information on and resources for, the use of technology in the teaching and learning of statistics, but it also provides leadership in ideas and strategies in teaching statistics at the tertiary level. Previously, Adrian was the leader of the STEPS project which was created by a consortium of eight UK university departments who developed problem-based learning materials in Statustucs, delivered on the computer, which have been used around the world for the past decade. Adrian's most recent interests in learning and teaching have been developing the rpanel graphics. This provides a set of simple interactive controls for R functions which are particularly usefl in creating dynamic graphics. The package is intended for general use but there is a particular strong application in a teaching context. The web page for the project gives a variety of examples. Adrian's reasearch interestes are nonparametric smoothing techniques, generalised additive models, three-dimensional shape modelling, graphics, statistical computing, and computer based learning.
dr robert gould
Director of the Centre for Teaching Statistics, University of California, Los Angeles
Website: http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~rgould/
OZCOTS2008 Presentation: Technological Literacy and Statistics Education: A call for thought and research
Rob is also vice-chair of undergraduate studies for the Department of Statistics at UCLA. His primary interests are in statistics education. He was co-principal investigator (with Roxy Peck), developer and instructor for the INSPIRE project - an on-line content-based course for beginning secondary school statistics teachers. He is a past chair of the American Statistical Association's Advisory Committee on Teacher Enhancement, and on the board of the ASA's Statistics Education Session. He is founding editor of Technology Instruction in Statistics Education, a new on-line journal that focuses on teaching with and about technology in statistics. He has worked as a consultant on the Tinkerplots (statistical graphics software for middle-school students) project with Cliff Konold and is currently the evaluator for Konold's Model Chance project, which is designing simulation software to teach probability to middle-school students. He is working with PI Joan Garfield as an evaluator for the NSF-funded AIMS project (Adapting and Implementing Innovative Material in Statistics).
dr michael martin
Professor in Statistics, School of Finance and Applied Statistics, Australian National University
Website: http://ecocomm.anu.edu.au/martin/
OZCOTS2008 Presentation: What lies beneath: inventing new wheels out of old
During his time as the Annenberg Distinguished Assistant Professor in Statistics at Stanford University, Michael was awarded the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in the School of Humanities and Sciences. In 1994 he returned to ANU where he established the degree program in actuarial studies. He received the ANU Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2000, and an Australian Award for University Teaching in 2007. He is chair of the Statistical Education Section of the Statistical Society of Australia, and has been recently named as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association for his services to research and teaching in statistics. His research interests include resampling, statistical graphics, statistical education, biostatistics and environmental statistics.
dr peter petocz
Associate Professor, Department of Statistics, Macquarie University
Website: http://www.efs.mq.edu.au/staff/alphabetical_list_of_staff/peter_petocz
OZCOTS2008 Presentation: On becoming an statistician
Peter’s research interests include the biostatistical areas of nutrition and orthodontics, and a long-standing interest in mathematics and statistics pedagogy, both in practical terms and as a research field. On the pedagogical side, Peter is the author of a range of learning materials - textbooks, video packages and computer-based materials - and has been recognised for his teaching by a University of Technology, Sydney, Teaching Award in 2001, as a finalist at the AAUT National Teaching Awards in 2003, and a Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning in 2006. Peter has been undertaking joint research with Dr Anna Reid (Macquarie University) over a period of several years in pedagogical aspects of statistics and mathematics, and of graduate 'dispositions' such as sustainability, ethics and creativity. His long term strategy in this area is to investigate and publish in the broad area of professional preparation (particularly in the area of statistics and mathematics education) and to explore the connection between students' conceptions of their discipline and study in that discipline, their perceptions of their future profession, and the links between these ideas.
professor chris wild
Department of Statistics, University of Auckland
Website: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~wild
OZCOTS2008 Presentation: Applied Statistics as a growth engine for statistics programmes
This department is the largest Statistics Department in Australia and New Zealand and is the birth place of R Project. Currently, Chris’ main research interests are in developing methods for modelling response-selective data (e.g. case-control studies) and missing data problems, and in additive model extensions to multivariate regression techniques. A long term interest in the teaching of statistics has also developed into a research interest with particular emphasis on statistical thinking and reasoning processes. Chris is a Council member of the International Statistical Institute, a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and was President of the International Association for Statistics Education (IASE) from 2003 to 2005. He is currently an Associate Editor of the International Statistical Review, and has been an Associate Editor of Biometrics , the Statistics Education Research Journal (SERJ), and the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics. He was Head of Auckland's Department of Statistics 2003-2007 and co-led the University of Auckland's first-year statistics teaching team to a national Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award in 2003.