SSC 2011 Wolfville

Case Studies 2011

Case Studies in Data Analysis poster sessions will be held during the SSC Annual Meeting in Wolfville June 12 - 15, 2011. The case studies are intended for teams of graduate and senior undergraduate students working either with or without faculty mentors. (See the Guidelines for Mentors.) Each participating team will choose to analyse one of the two data sets described below and the teams will present summaries of the methods they used and the results of their analyses in a poster presentation session at the meeting.

One award will be presented for the best case study poster in each of the two case studies. The Committee of the Award for Case Studies in Data Analysis will consider the quality of both the analysis of the data and the presentation of the results in reaching its decision. The value of the award for each case study in the 2011 competition will be $500. This is to be shared equally among the participants of each winning team. The Committee of the Award for Case Studies in Data Analysis reserves the right to decline to make an award for a given case study if numbers of entries are insufficient. For further information about the awards, please contact Lajmi Lakhal-Chaieb.
 
A subject-matter expert will prepare a poster introducing each case study, so teams presenting their analyses do not have to repeat the background information.
 
If you would like to participate, contact Lajmi Lakhal-Chaieb. He will need to know the list of names for your team and the university, or univerisities, that you represent. He will also need to know if you are giving any other oral or poster presentations at the meeting so that scheduling conflicts can be avoided. The deadline for contacting Lajmi is March 15, 2011.
 
You will doubtless have questions once you start working with the data. You can ask the organizers of each case study. Answers to frequently-asked questions will be added to the web page for each case study. Questions can be submitted in either English or French.
 
Case Studies
 
Click on the titles below for full information about the case studies.
 
 
The average earnings for men have been higher than those of women. This difference, often referred to as the gender wage gap, has been studied by a number of researchers using different data sources collected by Statistics Canada. This study will use the cross-sectional Public-Use Microdata File (PUMF) for the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) which contains data on income, labour, personal and family characteristics for the population living in the ten Canadian provinces. The main objective of the study is to analyse the gender gap in employment and earnings for young people (25-34) using the design-based approach. The students should also examine the difference between the design-based and model-based approach. They will also need to deal with the problem of the missing data.
 
 
Technological advances made in the recent years allow us today to detect and measure the volume of brown fat in adults. However, the factors enhancing the prevalence of brown fat are relatively unknown and still have to be disentangled. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between a number of factors such as Age, Body Mass Index and sex and the prevalence and volume of brown fat. The students will have to deal with the problems of zero-inflated distribution for outcomes and missing data.
 
Contact information
 
Organizer and Chair of the Committee of the Award for Case Studies in Data Analysis:
Lajmi Lakhal-Chaieb,
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Laval University
E-mail: Lajmi.Lakhal@mat.ulaval.ca
 
Organizers
Lenka Mach and Karla Fox,
Statistics Canada
E-mail: Lenka.Mach@statcan.gc.ca, Karla.Fox@statcan.gc.ca

 

Guidelines for Mentors:

The SSC Case Studies in Data Analysis exist for participation by teams of undergraduate and/or graduate students. All participating teams, if they desire, may recruit a non-student mentor, for example, a faculty member. In order to have the ability to fairly evaluate the work of the student teams, student teams and non-student mentors are encouraged to consider the following guidelines for their participation.

  1. Role of the student team: The approach to the case study should be planned, developed, and executed primarily by the student team. The student team also has responsibility for the organization and presentation of its findings.
  2. Role of the mentor: The mentor should encourage and support the student team. This may include listening to ideas, suggesting references, and asking questions to stimulate consideration of additional aspects of the case study. To be fair to all participating teams, the mentor should not take an active role in the development of the statistical analyses.