Welcomes

Welcome To The Conference From Ian Westbrooke, NZSA President

Welcome to the 2017 Joint Conference of the NZSA and the IASC-ARS,

I bid a special welcome to all who travelled far from countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. The New Zealand Statistical Association greatly appreciates the opportunity to share this conference with the International Society for Statistical Computing – Asian Regional Section. The massive growth in interest in data science and analytics demonstrates the need for greater availability of statistical and especially statistical computing expertise and input. This conference provides an opportunity for all of us as statisticians to develop and share the skills we can contribute to the increasing interest and need for our sort of quantitative skills.

It is fitting that we are meeting at Auckland University, the original home of R, and the home of its co-founder, Ross Ihaka. Ross has recently retired, and a theme of this conference is in honour of his huge contributions to our field.

The conference will be opened by the Dean of Science at the University of Auckland, Professor John Hosking, and the President of the IASC-ARS. In-between, we have six outstanding keynote speakers who set the framework for an exciting and diverse scientific program. I invite you all to attend presentations on topics familiar to your research and to explore what is done in other areas.

We have a very healthy number of students and early career researchers among the more than 300 delegates attending, indicating how popular, important and attractive data rich research continues to be in the years to come.

This conference will be a success because of excellent work by many, in particular by Thomas Yee, Ciprian Giurcaneanu and James Curran, who form the local organizing committee. Thanks also to (Chair of the Scientific Program) Ciprian Giurcaneanu, and his team: Rolf Turner and Abhinav Chopra. Thanks finally to Tessa Lloyd-Hagemann, our events coordinator.

I would also thank the four workshop presenters for their substantial contribution to this event before the main conference programme begins.

Last but not least I thank our sponsors: Minitab, The New Zealand Statistical Association, Harmonic Analytics, SAS, The International Society for Bayesian Analysis, Wiley and the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics, for their generous financial support. Many aspects of the conference are only possible because of their help,

Ian Westbrooke, President NZSA

Welcome Address From Jung Jin Lee, IASC-ARS Chair-Person

I appreciate your participation for the Joint Meeting of the 10th Conference of the Asian Regional Section of the International Association for Statistical Computing and the NZ Statistical Association, to be held at Auckland University, home of R, from 10 to 14 December 2017. It brings together eminent statisticians and members of the statistical computing community from Asia, NZ and other continents to present, discuss, promote and disseminate research and its applications. I hope you have a great and enjoyable opportunity for sharing experiences and networking within the R community, as well as enjoying the beautiful and warm ambience of Auckland.

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