The way society operates is becoming more complex as the fourth industrial revolution is driving changes in all spheres of life, leading to new data sources and emerging statistical possibilities. Major technological advancements are generating volumes of data never seen before. Satellite and mobile phones, sensors and the Internet of Things, robotics and automation, Global Positioning Systems and 5G telecommunication networks, higher computing power on smaller and smaller chips along with quantum computing, e-commerce and block chain - will all drive yet another wave of high volume, high variety and high velocity data. Organizations such as national statistical offices need to adapt in order to address growing societal needs and opportunities for timely analytical outputs. Advancements in the field of data science provides solutions to some of these new challenges, but what does it all mean for official statistics and what is the impact on how data are collected, compiled, analyzed and presented?
All members of the statistical community are invited to attend, whether they work in private organizations, governments or academia. The Symposium will include plenary, parallel and poster sessions that cover a wide variety of topics.
Symposium highlights include:
- Four-hour virtual workshops on Thursday, October 14
- Ethics and privacy (Guillaume Maranda, Statistics Canada with participation from Dr. David Robichaud, University of Ottawa, Miguel da Costa e Silva, Statistics Canada, Keven Bosa, Statistics Canada and Raphaël Duteau, Employment and Social Development Canada)
- Overview of Applied Data Science use cases at Statistics Canada (Monica Pickard, Statistics Canada with participation from Anurag Bejju, Nicholas Denis, Sayema Mashhadi, Andrés Solís Montero, Shirin Roshanafshar, Nikhil Widhani and Joanne Yoon, Statistics Canada)
- A Data Science Approach to Official Statistics Estimation: Leveraging the Power of Machine Learning Models (Kelly McConville, Reed College, Portland)
- Yoshua Bengio, MILA, Québec Artificial Intelligence Institute, as the keynote speaker on Friday, October 15
- Natalie Shlomo, University of Manchester, as the speaker of a session in honour of Professor Chris Skinner on Friday, October 22
- Sharon Lohr, Arizona State University, as the Waksberg Award speaker on Friday, October 29
- Eric Deeben, ONS Data Science Campus, Wendy Martinez, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Danny Pfeffermann, CBS Director, Israel as panelists in a session on Using data science to innovate and address emerging needs in official statistics on Friday November 5.
We are soliciting contributions that examine issues related to data science. Proposed topics should be included in one or more of the following themes:
- Modern methods for traditional survey steps (such as sampling, imputation, estimation, coding, classification, measurement of errors, record linkage, disclosure control, …)
- Advances in collection and questionnaire design (survey user interface, experience, …)
- Data science and machine learning methods for data mining, cleaning, processing or modelling
- Harnessing new sources of data (reducing response burden using big data, images, free text, web scraping, …)
- Quality assessments of various sources of data (such as registers, survey and qualitative data, media data, sensor data, …)
- Integrating multiple data sources (including those coming from probability and non-probability sources
- Data visualization for official statistics (dashboard, multidimensional data, dissemination, evaluation, spatial representation, …)
- Issues of ethics and privacy in the application of data science in official statistics
- Making official statistics more open (usage of open source standards, tools, infrastructure, …)
- Computational opportunities using cloud infrastructure/engineering (data management, data warehousing, database systems, …)
- Making dissemination more user-centric (interactive plots, real-time visualization, …)
- Research on understanding reasons for non-participation (in probabilistic/non-probabilistic surveys, by denying use of administrative data, …)
Please submit your proposal here by April 23, 2021. It must include the following: a title, an abstract of approximately 250 words (in English or French), the theme(s) you are targeting, three to six keywords and your full contact information.
We will contact you before May 21, 2021 to inform you whether your proposal was accepted. For all accepted proposals, you must submit the final version of your presentation (in English or French) by September 3, 2021. Please visit our website regularly in order to get more detailed and updated information.
Until then, stay safe and healthy,
The 2021 International Methodology Symposium Organizing Committee
E-mail: statcan.symposium-symposium.statcan@statcan.gc.ca