The annual conference of the American College of Sports Medicine will be in San Francisco next week.  This message is for anyone with an interest in statistics who is also going to the conference this year or next year.  Topics of this message: the biostats interest-group meeting, a new co-chair for the group, this year's stats presentation, and topics for next year's presentations.

BIOSTATS INTEREST-GROUP MEETING
   As usual, there will be an informal meeting of this group during the conference.  The meeting lasts for about an hour.  We discuss topics and speakers for the meeting the following year, along with any other statistical topics that anyone wants to raise.
   The better the turnout, the more likely our proposals will be accepted for talks at the 2004 annual meeting, so PLEASE MAKE AN EFFORT TO ATTEND.  You don't have to be a member of the group.  In any case, membership consists only of having your name recorded.  We missed out on giving two big talks this year, partly because there weren't many people at last year's interest-group meeting.
   Venue (for all interest groups, apparently): Hall B1, 5:45 pm, Thursday 29 May.  PLEASE NOTE IT IN YOUR DIARY NOW.

NEW CO-CHAIR FOR THE BIOSTATS GROUP
   Joe Weir and I have been co-chairs of the group for a few years.  Joe wants to step down, so we need a replacement.  ACSM likes to have at least one chair from North America.  I am happy to continue as co-chair, unless the group would like someone else.  Any nominations for either co-chair position?  Joe and I have already approached Ian Shrier and he is willing, so we hereby nominate him.  Ian specializes in epidemiological stats, so he would complement a co-chair specializing in experimental stats.  Please send any other nominations to Joe Weir <Joseph.Weir@...>.  We can set up an on-line poll through yahoogroups, if necessary.

PRESENTATION ON REPEATED MEASURES THIS YEAR
   There is only one special talk on stats this year, a tutorial lecture by me on the essentials of repeated-measures analyses.  Session H7, Saturday 1-2:30 pm.  Please attend, even if it does mean a later flight home.  NOTE IT IN YOUR DIARY NOW. 
   It's all about how to understand and analyze the data you get in experiments (trials or interventions).  Key words:  fixed and random effects, mixed modeling, MANOVA, ANOVA, sphericity, t tests, within-subject modeling, within- and between-subject effects, uniformity of error, transformations, covariates, mechanisms, individual responses.

TOPICS FOR NEXT YEAR'S ACSM MEETING
   We'll discuss these at the interest-group meeting, but please feel free to make suggestions before then, especially if you can't come to the meeting.  Here are some ideas.

• A debate on clinical vs statistical significance, or to put it another way, precision of estimation vs hypothesis testing.
• Ian Shrier in a message to me last year, suggested a debate on measures of validity and reliability: limits of agreement vs correlation vs typical (standard) error.  My view is that the issue is already settled (cf. Creationism vs Darwinism), but maybe some people still need persuading and it could be fun.
• Path analysis was to have been a talk for this year's meeting.  It's worth another shot.

Feel free to post to the list on any of the issues in this message.

Will
Will G Hopkins, PhD FACSM
Direct dial +64 9 917 9793, Fax +64 9 917 9960
Health Science/Sport and Recreation
Auckland University of Technology
Private Bag 92006, Auckland 1020, New Zealand
will@...
Statistics: http://newstats.org
Sportscience: http://sportsci.org
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