Campbell Bequest Fund
The NZSA were the recipients of a very generous donation ($48,000) from Professor Campbell’s estate. A group of the executive met to discuss options for use of this money, and recommended to the executive that the bequest be invested and interest from this be made available for special projects. The amount of funding available each year would be roughly $1500.

Applications would be received twice a year (April/October) for funding of special projects that were within the interests of Professor Campbell. Applications should be made to the Convenor of the Awards Committee.  The use of the funds in this way was considered against the option of allocating all, or a substantial part of the money, to a major project now. Given there is no major project immediately obvious, and without wanting to preclude the money being available for a worthy project at a later date, the "spend interest-only" option was adopted. The use of the fund would be reviewed in 5 years.

To better understand Professor Campbell’s interests, the following is summarised from a transcript of an interview of Professor Campbell with David Vere-Jones and Sharleen Forbes in 1987:

• the importance of a good mathematical foundation for any teaching of statistics;

• the likelihood of developments in mathematics being stimulated by the needs of the social sciences, and the role that women, in particular, will play in this;

• more generally the need to help women mathematicians;

• the responsibility he felt towards ‘second-tier’ students - the ‘elite’ ones were seen as ‘self-propelling’;

• effective connections between schools and universities;

• the importance of instilling intellectual honesty - much wider than just mathematics.

Overall he had a vision of mathematics and statistics as a unified whole.

Also, in recognition of Professor Campbell, the NZSA have the NZSA Campbell Award. The purpose of the award is to promote statistics in NZ and to recognise an individual’s contribution to the promotion and development of statistics. For more details see the award page.

Professor Campbell is pictured below, lecturing a 1962 Honours class. The NZSA is extremely grateful for his generosity.

The Otago Survey of Statisticians
2003: A Campbell Bequest Fund grant of $1000 was made in 2003 to cover postage in a University of Otago survey of PhD graduates from six of the New Zealand Universities in a range of subjects which have statistics prerequisites. The graduates had had two years in which to find employment because the purpose of the study was to discover what statistical techniques these graduates were using in the workplace and discover if there were any deficiencies in their university statistics training. A total of 977 graduates responded to our postal survey.  This represented a 40% response rate after follow up, which raised the number of respondents from around 780 to the 977.

One paper has been published in SERJ (Statistics Education Research Journal). The reference is Harraway, J.A. and Barker, R.J. Statistics in the workplace: a survey of use by recent graduates with higher degrees. Statistics Education Research Journal, 4(2): 43-58 (2005).

A second report was presented at ICOTS7 in Brazil where an item response analysis on the data was reported. The reference is Harraway, J.A. and Andrade, D.F. An item response analysis of statistics use in the workplace. Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Teaching Statistics, Salvador Bahia, Brazil. International Statistical Institute. Voorburg, the Netherlands (2006).
 

The New Zealand Statistician on CD project
2002-2004: The journal archive of the New Zealand Statistician (the official journal of the NZSA between 1966 and 1997) was converted to pdf format and a CD published of the entire contents of the NZS. This project was supervised by Murray Jorgensen and Harold Henderson. The total cost of the project was $1208.  About 100 copies of the CD have been distributed to September 2007.  For further information see:

NZSA 'New Zealand Statistician' Page

NZSA and the NZAMT Conference

The NZSA has supported the New Zealand Association of Mathematics Teachers' Conference through the sponsorship of the following invited and Plenary speakers:
 

1999 (Dunedin)	Jane Watson University of Tasmania
2001 (Wellington)	Gail Burrill Former President of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (USA)
2003 (Hamilton)	Jeff Witmer Oberlin College (USA)
2005 (Christchurch)	Helen Chick University of Melbourne
2007 (Auckland)	Maxine Pfannkuch University of Auckland
2009 (Palmerston North)	Cliff Konold University of Massachusetts (USA)

For the up and coming 2011 NZAMT conference NZSA has provided funds to support Professor Helen MacGillivray (Queensland University of Technology) as the Plenary speaker for Statistics.

The Educational DVD Project
2005-2006: The DVD: "Statistics in Research: A Visual Teaching Resource" was created by John Harraway (University of Otago) and filmed at and subsequent to the NZSA 2005 Conference in Dunedin.  It is now available through the CASM Unit, University of Otago.  It contains nine case studies, and has an accompanying data CD.  See the linked pdf file for full details. It was edited by John Harraway and Robert van der Vyver, and jointly sponsored by NZSA, with a $750 grant from the Campbell Bequest Fund, and HEDC, University of Otago.  Most of the publication run of 250 copies has now been sold; if you are interested in obtaining a copy please email Irene Goodwin at the CASM Unit, University of Otago. For further information see these web pages:

NZSA Newsletter Report
Promotional Flier
CASM Unit order form

John Harraway writes (12 September 2007):

The grant of $750 was received in 2005 to assist with development of a DVD and CD for school use and for use in teaching some preliminary classes at University. The DVD contains movies and powerpoints of seven researchers at the University of Otago plus some material from Statistics New Zealand. The CD contains the data used by the researchers and it is hoped this may provide ideas for project work in schools. 250 DVD/CD packs were produced. There are 27 remaining. About 195 have been purchased by schools in New Zealand for use in year 13 and the balance of 28 have been distributed to the presenters and the Education Committee of the New Zealand Statistics Association. The grant was used to pay for a member of staff of the Higher Education Development Unit at the University of Otago to travel to Christchurch to record the contributions from Statistics New Zealand. Also to help with the cost of production of the DVD/CD pack in Auckland. It was not intended to profit from the sales, just to break even.

The idea for the DVD/CD developed at the NZ Statistics Association Conference in Dunedin in 2005. Papers have been presented on the DVD at the NZ Statistics Association Conference in Christchurch in 2007. The material in the DVD/CD may be slightly complicated for school use. But the project was a move into the unknown. It is hoped that a second DVD/CD can be produced involving the advice from a school teacher to ensure that the product is presented at the appropriate level. There is some interest in this from the American Statistics Association Journal STATS: the magazine for students of statistics.

New Zealand Mathematics and Statistics Postgraduate Conference 2008
2008:  A grant of $500 was provided to support statistical students travelling to this conference, which was held in Whitianga in November 2008.

Report on the New Zealand Mathematics and Statistics Postgraduate (NZMASP) Conference, November 2008

Building on the success of the New Zealand Mathematics and Statistics Postgraduate Conference, held last year in 2007 in Queenstown. This meeting, like last year, included Honours, Masters and Doctoral students who are affiliated with Universities in New Zealand. There were 63 Mathematics and Statistics postgraduate students, from all of the New Zealand Universities, who travelled to Whitianga for this three day meeting. The talks at the meeting were diverse, ranging in topic from Representation theory to Queueing theory, from Phylogenetics to Topology. The quality of presentations was high with all students taking up the challenge of explaining their work to a more diverse audience than other conferences. Mareike Fischer’s presentation titled, “Why DNA Sequences can be Perfectly Misleading” was chosen for the New Zealand Institute of Mathematics & its Applications (NZIMA) Best Presentation Award. Peter (Johnny) Humphries’s Recreational Mathematics presentation on “Nesting Polynomials in Infinite Radicals” earned him the Peoples’ Choice Award sponsored by Hoare Research Software (HRS).

The meeting was co-directed by Howard Cohl and Alethea Rea from the Departments of Mathematics and the Department of Statistics respectively at the University of Auckland and organised by Maarten Jordens and Haydn Cooper at Massey Albany, Beata Faller at the University of Canterbury, Dion O’Neale at Massey Palmerston North, and Lyndon Walker of the Department of Statistics at the University of Auckland.

Funding was given by the The University of Auckland Department of Mathematics, The University of Auckland Department of Statistics, The New Zealand Institute of Mathematics & its Applications, The New Zealand Mathematical Society, The Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences at Massey University, Albany, The New Zealand Institute of Advanced Study at Massey University, Albany, Australian and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics, The New Zealand Statistical Association, and Hoare Research Software Ltd. The success of this conference indicates that it should be a fixture on the New Zealand Mathematical Conference scene. Keep on rolling on to NZMASP 2009!

New Zealand Mathematics and Statistics Postgraduate Conference 2009
2009:  A grant of $500 was provided to support statistical students travelling to this conference, which was held in Foxton in November 2009.

Report on the New Zealand Mathematics and Statistics Postgraduate (NZMASP) Conference, November 2009

For three days last month the normally quiet seaside township of Foxton Beach became a hive of mathematical and statistical enterprise with the 3rd annual New Zealand Maths And Statistics Postgraduate conference, NZMASP, held there over the 23rd-26th November 2009. As in previous years, the conference was well attended (57 students enrolled from honours, masters, and doctorate degrees) and was well represented by most of the New Zealand universities.

There was also a good spread of subjects with approximately 1/3 each of the talks split between pure mathematics, applied mathematics, and statistics.

The student presentations were very enjoyable and the attendees gained valuable experience and an opportunity to test out and refine their talks ahead of bigger events such as the New Zealand Mathematics Colloquium. Of particular note were talks from Shannon Ezzat (university of Canterbury) who took out the best pure mathematics talk, Rachael Tappenden (University of Canterbury) who presented the best applied mathematics talk, Lyndon Walker (University of Auckland) who won the best statistics talk, and Yousaf Habib (University of Auckland) who was voted the "peoples choice" for 2009. Also, two members of the "Calcium Mafia" (their words, not mine!), Emily Harvey and Katie Sharp, from the University of Auckland were highly commended.

The meeting was co-directed by Atheer Matroud and Luke Fullard of the Institute of Fundamental Sciences, Massey University and organised by Haydn Cooper at Massey Albany, Brigid Betz-Stablein at IFS, Massey, Christopher Ball at Victoria University, Shannon Ezzat of the University of Canterbury, and Aidin Jalilzadeh of the University of Otago.

The conference organisers would like to thank the sponsors of this event for encouraging and enabling the professional development of postgraduate students throughout New Zealand. The sponsors this year were: NZMS; NZIMA; ANZIAM; NZSA; Hoare Research Software Ltd.; Statistics New Zealand; SAS; Institute of Fundamental Sciences, Massey University; Mathematics and Statistics Department, University of Canterbury; Mathematics and Statistics Department, University of Auckland; School of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research, Victoria University.

Student feedback received from the NZMASP conferences included:

"NZMASP was a good opportunity to network with other maths and stats postgrad students. On both a social and professional research level this was very valuable."

"Getting to see stats, applied maths and pure maths talks gave students the opportunity to see what was being done in related disciplines. There were actually strong links between some of the work done in applied maths and stats, i.e. work in genetics and biomath/stats modelling. I think there was definitely value in having the 3 groups together."

"NZMASP was a good opportunity for more senior postgraduate students to have the experience of: chairing sessions, organising + running a conference, evaluating abstracts etc."

We all look forward to the 2010 event. We hope this conference becomes an institution for the mathematics and statistics postgraduate students of New Zealand.

Development of Teaching Resources using GENSTAT SCHOOLS Package
2010: GENSTAT SCHOOLS is available for free use in all New Zealand schools. The $1000 grant from the Campbell Fund has paid for the accommodation in Dunedin for one night of David Baird when he travelled to Dunedin to present a session on GENSTAT SCHOOLS to local High School Heads of Department (Mathematics) and other invited people. There were 14 people at this meeting. It has resulted in productive work developing resource materials based on the new statistics curriculum being introduced in New Zealand.

The balance of the grant is paying Ross Haines, an honours statistics student at the University of Otago, to develop lessons for school teachers using GENSTAT SCHOOLS based on the data sets described in the 18 videos of statistics in action which have been recorded using an earlier Campbell Fund grant. Ross will be resuming this work as soon as his first semester exams are completed in late June. The intention is to have a comprehensive set of lessons for teachers using GENSTAT by the start of next year.

John Harraway