| Highlights of the 1999 Chapter Meetings |
The host college for the 1999 Florida Chapter Meetings was theUniversity of Florida. Registration and Friday afternoon Session I paper presentations took place at the Reitz Union building on the Gainesville campus. The Saturday morning business meeting and Session II presentations were held in beautifully-restored Griffin-Floyd Hall, home of the UF Statistics Department. Refreshments were served at both venues. The Friday evening banquet was a sumptuous buffet and cash-bar on the panoramic 11th Floor of University Centre Hotel adjoining the campus.
Session I included a new feature of the annual meetings: The Student Paper Competition. Five excellent combatants from three universities participated in the inaugural contest. The winner was Marc Loizeaux of FSU for his paper, "Pose/Location Estimation of Ground Targets." The winner of the $100 prize was announced by the new chapter president during the Saturday session. The quality of this year's student papers inspired excitement among attendees about next year's competition.
The invited guest speakers were Dr. Sanford Weisberg of the University of Minnesota and Dr. W. Michael O'Fallon, Chair of the Department of Health Science at the Mayo Clinic. Their papers, "Graphical Methods for Binary Data" and "Modeling Generalized Attributable Risk" were the concluding papers of each day's sessions. Unfortunately, "Statistics in Litigation" could not be presented because Dr. James T. McClave's was called away by (what else?) an unforseen litigation. Instead, Dr. O'Fallon volunteered for double duty by soberly relating how the potential for legal exposure in class-action suits can have a chilling effect on future scientific research.
At the business meeting, Dr. Jayaram Sethuraman (FSU) was elected chapter
president, Dr. Matoteng Ncube (UWF) vice-president, and Dr. Mark Soskin
(UCF) secretary/treasurer for 1999. Dr. Sethuraman volunteered his
Florida State University campus to host the year 2000 meetings.