3rd IASC world conference on
Computational Statistics & Data Analysis
Amathus Beach Hotel, Limassol, Cyprus, 28-31 October, 2005
 
Title: Advances in Mixture Models

Description:

Mixture models experience sustainable popularity over recent years. Not only that they are natural models to adjust for unobserved or latent heterogeneity, they are fundamental cornerstones in many areas in statistics such as smoothing, empirical Bayes, likelihood based clustering, or latent variable analysis among others. As semi-parametric models they combine par excellence the compromise in the trade-off between imposed model structure and freedom in model adaptation to the data. However, mixture models experience a number of difficulties. The likelihood may not be bounded, and, even if it were, the global maximum might not be a good choice. Algorithmic solutions are nearly almost required and algorithms such as the EM algoirthm is experiencing numerous problems such as the choice of initial values or using an adequate stopping rule. The number of components problem and model selection add one more to the many areas of interest. Diverse application areas such as capture-rapture approaches or clustering of gene expression data have been added to numerous existing application areas such as disease mapping or meta-analysis. The track is primarily devoted to these newly emerging issues.

Focus:

All Application Areas of Mixture Models
Algorithms: Starting and Stopping Rules
Testing in Mixture Models
Mixtures with Unbounded Likelihoods
Identifiability Problems
Multivariate Mixtures
Mixed Generalized Linear Models
Problems in Bayesian Approaches for Mixtures
Mixtures of Parametric Mixtures
Mixtures of Profile Likelihoods
Free Topics dealing with Mixtures

Co-Chairs:

Prof. Dr. Dankmar Bahning
(Coordinating Chair)
Working Group on Biostatistics and Biomathematics
Division for International Health
Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics
Charité University Medical Center Berlin
Fabeckstr. 60-62, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Tel: +49 30 8445 1292
Fax: +49 30 8445 1290
Email: dankmar.boehning@charite.de

Prof. Dr. Wilfried Seidel
(Inference, Algorithms, Economic Applications)
Helmut-Schmidt-University
University of the Armed Forces Hamburg
D-22039 Hamburg, Germany
Tel: +49 40 6541 2778
Fax: +49 40 6541 2091
E-mail: wilfried.seidel@hsu-hh.de
Prof. Dr. Bernard Garel
(Inference, Bayesian Approaches, Technical Applications)
Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse
2 rue Camichel, BP 7122
31071 Toulouse cedex 7, France
Tel: +33 (0) 561 58 82 22
Fax: +33 (0) 561 58 82 37
E-mail: garel@enseeiht.fr
Prof. Dr. Valentin Patilea
(Inference, Asymptotics, Identifiability)
CREST-ENSAI
Campus de Ker-Lann
Rue Blaise Pascal - BP 37203
35172 Bruz cedex, France
Tel: + 33 (0)2 99 05 3325
Fax: + 33 (0)2 99 05 3205
E-mail: valentin.patilea@ensai.fr
Prof. Dr. Geoff McLachlan
(Inference, Clustering, Applications)
Department of Mathematics
University of Queensland
St. Lucia, Brisbane,
Australia 4072
Tel: +61 7 336 52150
Fax: +61 7 336 51477
E-mail: gjm@maths.uq.edu.au

Prof. Dr. Marco Alfa
(Random Effects and Longitudinal Mixture Modelling)
Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilita  e Statistiche Applicate,
UniversitĂ  'La Sapienza' di Roma
P.le A. Moro, 5
I-00185 Rome, Italy
Tel: +39-06-49910657
Fax: +39-06-4959241
E-mail: marco.alfo@muniroma1.it
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Matthias Greiner
(Agricultural, Biological, Medical, Food Science Applications)
International EpiLab and Animal Health Section
Department of Epidemiology and Risk Assessment
Danish Institute of Food and Veterinary Research
Mørkhæj Bygade 19
2860 Søborg, Denmark
Tel: +45 72 34 60 00
Fax: +45 72 34 70 01
E-mail: mgr@dfvf.dk