Loughin to be named Fellow

  The department is pleased to learn that Dr. Tom Loughin, former faculty member, will be named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association at this summer's Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Denver. The recognition will be part of the main program on Tuesday evening, August 5th, 2008.

Tom earned his BS at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, his MS at the University of North Carolina, and his PhD at Iowa State University before joining the K-State faculty in 1993.  He was a very popular professor in the department from that time until 2006, when he and his family moved to the suburbs of Vancouver, BC, Canada as he took a position with Simon Fraser University.

Tom earned a reputation as an outstanding teacher, researcher and consultant on the K-State campus. Students from the department perhaps remember him most as a dynamic and demanding, yet highly enthusiastic and accessible instructor. He taught the applied linear models, categorical data analysis, and bootstrapping courses, just to name a few, to numerous classes of graduate students.

The process of nomination for this honor requires letters of support  from the statistical community. Tom's nomination received strong letters written by six very prominent statisticians spread across the nation,  all of whom were impressed by his career achievements. The citation for Tom's honor reads "For outstanding teaching, research, consulting, and editorial service; for effective promotion of the field of statistics to a wide variety of audiences; for leadership in and service to the profession."

Johnson, Milliken to Lead 2009 Conference

 We have big news for next year's (2009) Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture. Dallas Johnson and George Milliken will share the workshop/keynote speaker role and will bring folks up to date on the newest developments in the Messy Data arena.

They have just, earlier this summer, completed the revision of their widely acclaimed "Analysis of Messy Date" book, with the final draft going to the publisher in June. They will present a course on the material at the workshop at next spring's conference. You won't want to miss this.  Topics will include unequal variances, multiple comparison enhancements, experimental design examples, random effects models enhancements, split-plot enhancements, repeated measures enhancements, and more.

In April, 2008, the department held its 20th annual (can that possibly be right??). Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture at the Clarion Hotel (formerly the Holiday Inn) in Manhattan. This conference has continued to prosper and attract a steady audience of agricultural researchers in ways that we didn't anticipate when it began in 1989.

This year's workshop leader and keynote speaker was Dr. Tom Loughin, formerly a faculty member in the department and a longtime participant and supporter of the conference. Tom is currently a faculty member in the Department of Statistics at Simon Fraser University in Surrey (a suburb of Vancouver) BC, Canada. He presented a Sunday workshop on the application of categorical data methods in agriculture. His keynote talk to conference on Monday dealt with the proper design and analysis of multi-year trial, a common issue in agricultural research, and was attended by several campus researchers in addition to the usual conference audience. It was very enthusiastically received.

In addition to the workshop and keynote address, the conference always includes contributed presentations and posters. At this year's conference, additional emphasis and publicity was given to poster presentations (this is in line with what is happening at larger meetings of statisticians as well) and this was well-received. Social events included the student pizza party and the Kansas country dance as well.

Planning is already well underway for next year's conference. You will note that one of our lead stories points out that Dallas Johnson and George Milliken will talk about Messy Data at the 2009 conference; it promises to be a big hit.