Un’importante prova di quanto l’università non debba essere solo attività curriculare, ma anche un centro di scambio culturale e interdisciplinare.. Consigliamo a tutti la partecipazione.

15 ottobre 2009, ore 15
Dipartimento SSEAD – Aula Regina Elena (Viale Regina Elena 295 – Palazzina G)
“Le radici culturali della crisi economica”
Relatore: Alessandro Roncaglia (Sapienza Università di Roma)

29 ottobre 2009, ore 15
Dipartimento SSEAD – Aula Regina Elena (Viale Regina Elena 295 – Palazzina G)
“Le cause ultime della crisi e la necessità di imprimere una svolta radicale alla regolamentazione finanziaria”
Relatore: Mario Tonveronachi (Università degli Studi di Siena)

12 novembre 2009, ore 14.30
Facoltà di Scienze Statistiche – Aula Gini
“Il contratto di rete”
Relatori: Mario Nuzzo (Università Luiss Guido Carli, Roma), Pietro Masi (Università di Roma “Tor Vergata”), Andrea Perrone (Ordine dei Dottori Commercialisti, Roma), Andrea Saba (Sapienza Università di Roma)

26 novembre 2009, ore 15
Facoltà di Scienze Statistiche – Aula Gini
“Miserie urbane: Torino, Roma, Napoli”
Relatori: Antonella Meo (Università di Torino), Fiorenza Deriu (Sapienza Università di Roma), Enrica Morlicchio (Università di Napoli Federico II), Marco Revelli (Presidente della Commissione d’indagine sull’esclusione sociale)

17 dicembre 2009, ore 14.30
Dipartimento SSEAD – Aula Regina Elena  (Viale Regina Elena 295 – Palazzina G)
“L’utilizzo di matrici origine destinazione dei flussi migratori”
Relatori: Oliviero Casacchia (Sapienza Università di Roma), Massimiliano Crisci (IRPPS/CNR)

Appuntamento il 22 OTTOBRE 2009

Dalle 22.00 fino a notte fonda

Prevendite (entrata più una consumazione) a soli 5 €

Dove? Balic Disco – Via degli Aurunci, 35  (San Lorenzo)

Per informazioni e prevendite:

Mauro Piccinini                327 1445795

Giorgio Vasselli              349 5444104

Riccardo Cappelletti       345 6999496

Aida Khalil                      338 7636007

Michele Marsili                349 8345131

Cristina Toppo                 339 6642788

e tutti gli altri ragazzi dell’ OSSERVATORIO DEGLI STUDENTI

Gruppo Facebook: “La Sapienza Scienze Statistiche”

Festa di Facoltà di Scienze Statistiche

ringrazio, su questo più antico canale, per i tanti messaggi di ringraziamento per le info nel messaggio inviato ai membri del gruppo Facebook, che Walter un anno fa ebbe la lungimiranza di aprire un anno fa:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6945816515

Per qualsiasi cosa ci trovate anche lì, questo sito ha evidentemente cambiato connotazione ed obiettivi, e avere 2 canali differenziati mi sembra anche più interessante.

Buona visione!

August 6, 2009

For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics

By STEVE LOHR

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — At Harvard, Carrie Grimes majored in anthropology and archaeology and ventured to places like Honduras, where she studied Mayan settlement patterns by mapping where artifacts were found. But she was drawn to what she calls “all the computer and math stuff” that was part of the job.

“People think of field archaeology as Indiana Jones, but much of what you really do is data analysis,” she said.

Now Ms. Grimes does a different kind of digging. She works at Google, where she uses statistical analysis of mounds of data to come up with ways to improve its search engine.

Ms. Grimes is an Internet-age statistician, one of many who are changing the image of the profession as a place for dronish number nerds. They are finding themselves increasingly in demand — and even cool.

“I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And I’m not kidding.”

The rising stature of statisticians, who can earn $125,000 at top companies in their first year after getting a doctorate, is a byproduct of the recent explosion of digital data. In field after field, computing and the Web are creating new realms of data to explore — sensor signals, surveillance tapes, social network chatter, public records and more. And the digital data surge only promises to accelerate, rising fivefold by 2012, according to a projection by IDC, a research firm.

Yet data is merely the raw material of knowledge. “We’re rapidly entering a world where everything can be monitored and measured,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Digital Business. “But the big problem is going to be the ability of humans to use, analyze and make sense of the data.”

The new breed of statisticians tackle that problem. They use powerful computers and sophisticated mathematical models to hunt for meaningful patterns and insights in vast troves of data. The applications are as diverse as improving Internet search and online advertising, culling gene sequencing information for cancer research and analyzing sensor and location data to optimize the handling of food shipments.

Even the recently ended Netflix contest, which offered $1 million to anyone who could significantly improve the company’s movie recommendation system, was a battle waged with the weapons of modern statistics.

Though at the fore, statisticians are only a small part of an army of experts using modern statistical techniques for data analysis. Computing and numerical skills, experts say, matter far more than degrees. So the new data sleuths come from backgrounds like economics, computer science and mathematics.

They are certainly welcomed in the White House these days. “Robust, unbiased data are the first step toward addressing our long-term economic needs and key policy priorities,” Peter R. Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, declared in a speech in May. Later that day, Mr. Orszag confessed in a blog entry that his talk on the importance of statistics was a subject “near to my (admittedly wonkish) heart.”

I.B.M., seeing an opportunity in data-hunting services, created a Business Analytics and Optimization Services group in April. The unit will tap the expertise of the more than 200 mathematicians, statisticians and other data analysts in its research labs — but that number is not enough. I.B.M. plans to retrain or hire 4,000 more analysts across the company.

In another sign of the growing interest in the field, an estimated 6,400 people are attending the statistics profession’s annual conference in Washington this week, up from around 5,400 in recent years, according to the American Statistical Association. The attendees, men and women, young and graying, looked much like any other crowd of tourists in the nation’s capital. But their rapt exchanges were filled with talk of randomization, parameters, regressions and data clusters. The data surge is elevating a profession that traditionally tackled less visible and less lucrative work, like figuring out life expectancy rates for insurance companies.

Ms. Grimes, 32, got her doctorate in statistics from Stanford in 2003 and joined Google later that year. She is now one of many statisticians in a group of 250 data analysts. She uses statistical modeling to help improve the company’s search technology.

For example, Ms. Grimes worked on an algorithm to fine-tune Google’s crawler software, which roams the Web to constantly update its search index. The model increased the chances that the crawler would scan frequently updated Web pages and make fewer trips to more static ones.

The goal, Ms. Grimes explained, is to make tiny gains in the efficiency of computer and network use. “Even an improvement of a percent or two can be huge, when you do things over the millions and billions of times we do things at Google,” she said.

It is the size of the data sets on the Web that opens new worlds of discovery. Traditionally, social sciences tracked people’s behavior by interviewing or surveying them. “But the Web provides this amazing resource for observing how millions of people interact,” said Jon Kleinberg, a computer scientist and social networking researcher at Cornell.

For example, in research just published, Mr. Kleinberg and two colleagues followed the flow of ideas across cyberspace. They tracked 1.6 million news sites and blogs during the 2008 presidential campaign, using algorithms that scanned for phrases associated with news topics like “lipstick on a pig.”

The Cornell researchers found that, generally, the traditional media leads and the blogs follow, typically by 2.5 hours. But a handful of blogs were quickest to quotes that later gained wide attention.

The rich lode of Web data, experts warn, has its perils. Its sheer volume can easily overwhelm statistical models. Statisticians also caution that strong correlations of data do not necessarily prove a cause-and-effect link.

For example, in the late 1940s, before there was a polio vaccine, public health experts in America noted that polio cases increased in step with the consumption of ice cream and soft drinks, according to David Alan Grier, a historian and statistician at George Washington University. Eliminating such treats was even recommended as part of an anti-polio diet. It turned out that polio outbreaks were most common in the hot months of summer, when people naturally ate more ice cream, showing only an association, Mr. Grier said.

If the data explosion magnifies longstanding issues in statistics, it also opens up new frontiers.

“The key is to let computers do what they are good at, which is trawling these massive data sets for something that is mathematically odd,” said Daniel Gruhl, an I.B.M. researcher whose recent work includes mining medical data to improve treatment. “And that makes it easier for humans to do what they are good at — explain those anomalies.”

Andrea Fuller contributed reporting.

adesioni: http://www.petitiononline.com/open_sas/

…25/03/09 170 FIRME IN UN SOLO GIORNO!…

I firmatari, studenti della Facoltà di Scienze Statistiche, Sapienza Università di Roma,

auspicando fattivamente la più ampia diffusione, utilizzo ed insegnamento dei principali software statistici, open source o a pagamento, principalmente utilizzati in ambito lavorativo o di ricerca,

valutando positivamente l’impegno della Facoltà e dei docenti di questa per l’attivazione di corsi di introduzione a R, gratuiti per gli studenti della Facoltà stessa, arrivati alla quarta edizione,

ricordando con entusiasmo un’analoga iniziativa del 2005 di corsi inerenti il software SAS,

essendo a conoscenza della disponibilità del prof. Enzo D’Arcangelo per una nuova sessione di corsi per il medesimo software SAS, gratuiti per gli studenti della Facoltà di Scienze Statistiche o comunque soggetti a modiche spese o contributi per l’organizzazione,

giudicando quest’ultima un’opportunità di formazione e accrescimento di cultura operativa statistica della medesima importanza dei corsi R,

RICHIEDONO

che la Facoltà di Scienze Statistiche, Sapienza Università di Roma, attivi quanto prima – as soon as possible – corsi di introduzione e specializzazione per la pratica e l’utilizzo del software statistico SAS, facendosi carico dell’organizzazione operativa e logistica.

I firmatari ritengono che la Facoltà dovrebbe patrocinare e sostenere ogni attività volta all’acquisizione di tecniche e metodi operativi per gli studenti iscritti, a prescindere dalla gratuità o meno del software utilizzato.

Primi firmatari della petizione

Giorgio Vasselli

Giovanni M dell’Oro

adesioni: http://www.petitiononline.com/open_sas/