A Conversation with Alan Gelfand

Alan E. Gelfand was born April 17, 1945, in the Bronx, New York. He attended public grade schools and did his undergraduate work at what was then called City College of New York (CCNY, now CUNY), excelling at mathematics. He then surprised and saddened his mother by going all the way across the country to Stanford to graduate school, where he completed his dissertation in 1969 under the direction of Professor Herbert Solomon, making him an academic grandson of Herman Rubin and Harold Hotelling. Alan then accepted a faculty position at the University of Connecticut (UConn) where he was promoted to tenured associate professor in 1975 and to full professor in 1980. A few years later he became interested in decision theory, then empirical Bayes, which eventually led to the publication of Gelfand and Smith [J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 85 (1990) 398-409], the paper that introduced the Gibbs sampler to most statisticians and revolutionized Bayesian computing. In the mid-1990s, Alan's interests turned strongly to spatial statistics, leading to fundamental contributions in spatially-varying coefficient models, coregionalization, and spatial boundary analysis (wombling). He spent 33 years on the faculty at UConn, retiring in 2002 to become the James B. Duke Professor of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University, serving as chair from 2007-2012. At Duke, he has continued his work in spatial methodology while increasing his impact in the environmental sciences. To date, he has published over 260 papers and 6 books; he has also supervised 36 Ph.D. dissertations and 10 postdocs. This interview was done just prior to a conference of his family, academic descendants, and colleagues to celebrate his 70th birthday and his contributions to statistics which took place on April 19-22, 2015 at Duke University.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/15-STS521 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

The Use of E-supervision to Support Speech-Language Pathology Graduate Students during Student Teaching Practica

In the present feasibility study, e-supervision was used to provide university liaison supervision to SLP graduate students enrolled in student teaching practica. Utilizing a mixed methodology approach, interview and survey data were compared in order to identify similarities and differences between face-to-face and e-supervision and guide future practice. Results showed e-supervised graduate students received adequate supervision, feedback, support, and communication. Further, e-supervision provided additional benefits to supervisors, children on the caseload, and universities. Despite the benefits, disadvantages emerged. Implications for future practice and limitations of the study were identified

¿Campesinos, Banqueros o ahorristas? La economía y la aprobación presidencial en Uruguay

How the public translates economic information into opinions about their leaders is a fundamental question at the intersection of political economy and mass politics. A prominent study by MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson (1992) found evidence in support of a rational-expectations model of economic voting, whereby the public judges the president not on how past economic performance as affected them personally (like a “peasant”) but rather according to full information about national economic forecasts and/or the implications of current policies for future performance (like a “banker”). We test how well this model travels to Uruguay using an original monthly time series on presidential approval, objective indicators of economic conditions, and consumer confidence levels. Results reject both the “peasant” and the “banker” logic and, instead, suggest Uruguayans translate information about the economy into personal economic prospections and judge the president accordingly. Since this process borrows the personal/egotropic element of the “peasant” logic and the prospective element of the “banker” logic, blending these caricatures we conclude the political economy of presidential approval in Uruguay resembles that of a “piggybanker”La forma en que la opinión pública traduce la información económica en opiniones sobre sus líderes es un tema fundamental en la relación entre economía política y la política de masas. El famoso estudio de MacKuen, Erikson y Stimson (1992) demostró que existe un modelo de voto económico basado en expectativas racionales, donde el público no juzga al presidente a partir de la forma en que el desempeño económico del pasado los ha afectado personalmente (como “campesinos”), sino a partir de como el estado de la economía nacional,  y/o de la implementación de ciertas políticas, puede afectar el desempeño de la economía en futuro (como “banqueros”). Aquí usando una serie mensual de datos sobre aprobación presidencial, indicadores objetivos de condiciones económicas y niveles de confianza de los consumidores, testeamos qué tan bien aplica este modelo para el caso de Uruguay. Los resultados permiten rechazar tanto la lógica del “campesino” como la lógica del “banquero” y, en cambio, sugieren que los uruguayos juzgan al Presidente a partir de la información sobre la economía a partir de evaluaciones prospectivas sobre su economía personal. Dado que el proceso toma los elementos personales o egotrópicos de la lógica del “campesino” y los elementos prospectivos de la lógica del “banquero”, mezclamos estas caricaturas para concluir que la economía política de la aprobación presidencial en Uruguay se asemeja a la de un “ahorrista”

Promising Practices in E-Supervision: Exploring Graduate Speech-Language Pathology Interns’ Perceptions

E-supervision has a potential role in addressing speech-language personnel shortages in rural and difficult to staff school districts. The purposes of this article are twofold: to determine how e-supervision might support graduate speech-language pathologist (SLP) interns placed in rural, remote, and difficult to staff public school districts; and, to investigate interns’ perceptions of in-person supervision compared to e-supervision. The study used a mixed methodology approach and collected data from surveys, supervision documents and records, and interviews. The results showed the use of e-supervision allowed graduate SLP interns to be adequately supervised across a variety of clients and professional activities in a manner that was similar to in-person supervision. Further, e-supervision was perceived as a more convenient and less stressful supervision format when compared to in-person supervision. Other findings are discussed and implications and limitations provided

Associations of Adiponectin with Adiposity, Insulin Sensitivity, and Diet in Young, Healthy, Mexican Americans and Non-Latino White Adults.

Low circulating adiponectin levels may contribute to higher diabetes risk among Mexican Americans (MA) compared to non-Latino whites (NLW). Our objective was to determine if among young healthy adult MAs have lower adiponectin than NLWs, independent of differences in adiposity. In addition, we explored associations between adiponectin and diet. This was an observational, cross-sectional study of healthy MA and NLW adults living in Colorado (U.S.A.). We measured plasma total adiponectin, adiposity (BMI, and visceral adipose tissue), insulin sensitivity (IVGTT), and self-reported dietary intake in 43 MA and NLW adults. Mean adiponectin levels were 40% lower among MA than NLW (5.8 ± 3.3 vs. 10.7 ± 4.2 µg/mL, p = 0.0003), and this difference persisted after controlling for age, sex, BMI, and visceral adiposity. Lower adiponectin in MA was associated with lower insulin sensitivity (R² = 0.42, p < 0.01). Lower adiponectin was also associated with higher dietary glycemic index, lower intake of vegetables, higher intake of trans fat, and higher intake of grains. Our findings confirm that ethnic differences in adiponectin reflect differences in insulin sensitivity, but suggest that these are not due to differences in adiposity. Observed associations between adiponectin and diet support the need for future studies exploring the regulation of adiponectin by diet and other environmental factors

Constrained Curve Fitting

We survey techniques for constrained curve fitting, based upon Bayesian statistics, that offer significant advantages over conventional techniques used by lattice field theorists.Comment: Lattice2001(plenary); plenary talk given by G.P. Lepage at Lattice 2001 (Berlin); 9 pages, 5 figures (postscript specials