frastructural

April 5-8, 2000
Monteleone Hotel
New Orleans, Louisiana

S
PONSORED BY

The Interface Foundation of North America

H
OSTED BY

Los Alamos National Laboratory
Neptune and Company, Inc.
RAND

C
O
-
SPONSORS

U.S. Office of Naval Research
ASA Section on Statistical Computing
ASA Section on Statistical Graphics
SAS Institute, Inc.
MathSoft, Inc.
Bureau of Labor Statistics

C
OOPERATING
O
RGANIZATIONS

ASA CSNA ENAR IASC INFORMS IMS SIAM WNAR



2







I
NTERFACE
2000

S
PONSOR

The Interface Foundation of North America is a
nonprofit educational corporation founded in 1987 to
sponsor the symposium and publish the proceedings.
The IFNA is also a co-publisher of the Journal of
Computational and Graphical Statistics.


B
USINESS
O
FFICE

Interface Foundation of North America
P. O. Box 7640
Fairfax Station, VA 22039-7460
(703) 993-4635
interface@galaxy.gmu.edu

P
ROCEEDINGS
E
DITORS

Yvonne M. Martinez
Los Alamos National Laboratory
yxm@lanl.gov

Edward J. Wegman
George Mason University
ewegman@gmu.edu

C
ONFERENCE
C
HAIRS

Sallie Keller-McNulty
Statistical Sciences Group
Los Alamos National Laboratory
P. O. Box 1663
Group TSA-1, Mail Stop F600
Los Alamos, NM 87545
(505) 665-3957
sallie@lanl.gov

Vicki Lancaster
Neptune and Company, Inc.
657 Magnolia Wood Avenue
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70808-6053
(225) 766-7259
vlancast@neptuneandco.com

Sally C. Morton
RAND
1700 Main Street
P. O. Box 2138
Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138
(310) 393-0411, x7360
Sally_Morton@rand.org

P
ROGRAM
C
OMMITTEE


Paul Black
Neptune and Company, Inc.
pblack@neptuneandco.com
Andreas Buja
AT&T
andreas@research.att.com
Lorraine Denby
Bell LabsLucent Technologies
ld@research.bell-labs.com
Cathryn Dippo
Bureau of Labor Statistics
dippoc@ore.psb.bls.gov
Luis A. Escobar
Louisiana State University
luis@stat.lsu.edu
Alan Karr
National Institute of Statistical Sciences
karr@niss.org
Dorothy Merritts
Franklin and Marshall College
D_Merritts@acad.FandM.edu

Leslie M. Moore
Los Alamos National Laboratory
lmoore@lanl.gov
Barry Moser
Louisiana State University
bmoser@lsu.edu
Doug Nychka
National Center for Atmospheric Research
nychka@cgd.ucar.edu
Bonnie Ray
New Jersey Institute of Technology
borayx@m.njit.edu
William Shannon
Washington University School of Medicine
shannon@osler.wustl.edu
Nancy Spruill
Office of the Under Secretary of Defense
spruilnl@acq.osd.mil
Edward J. Wegman
George Mason University
ewegman@gmu.edu 3
G
ENERAL
I
NFORMATION


C
ONFERENCE
F
ACILITIES

Interface 2000 is being held in the Monteleone Hotel
conference facilities (see map inside back cover). The
Monteleone Hotel is located in New Orleans beautiful
French Quarter.
E
VENING
M
IXER

Interface 2000 will be kicked-off with a mixer
Wednesday evening at 8:0010:00 p.m. in the River
View Room atop the Monteleone Hotel overlooking the
Mississippi River and the French Quarter. Please take
this opportunity to renew old acquaintances and meet
new friends. Refreshments will be provided.
E
XHIBIT
H
ALL

The exhibit hall will be located in the Queen Anne
Room and will be open from 9:00 a.m.5:00 p.m.
Thursday and Friday. The following companies and
organizations will exhibit:
Books and Books
Springer-Verlag
American Statistical Association (ASA)
ASA Section on Statistical Graphics
ASA-SIAM Series on Statistics and Applied
Probability
Caucus for Women in Statistics
Classification Society of North America
Institute for Operations Research and the
Management Sciences
Institute of Mathematical Statistics
Interface Foundation of North America
International Association for Statistical Computing:
A Section of the International Statistical Institute
Los Alamos National Laboratory
National Institute of Statistical Sciences
National Science Foundation
Neptune and Company, Inc.
Probability and Statistics Program, Office of Naval
Research
RAND
Please visit and support this years exhibitors.
T
ECHNICAL
S
ESSIONS

Room locations and times for all Invited and
Contributed Technical Sessions are listed in the
program.
I
NVITED
P
OSTER
S
ESSIONS

Several of the Invited Technical Sessions have
companion Invited Posters. These posters will be
displayed in the Queen Anne Room during the entire
day of the corresponding Invited Technical Session.
The poster presenters will be available for discussion
at their posters during the morning and afternoon
breaks. The poster abstracts are listed with their
companion Invited Technical Sessions in the program.
B
REAKS

Breaks on Thursday and Friday will be in the Queen
Anne Room where exhibits and Invited Posters are
displayed. The breaks are scheduled for 9:4510:30
a.m. and 3:15-4:00 p.m. These have been
intentionally scheduled longer than normal conference
breaks to provide adequate opportunity to view the
Invited Posters and foster discussion and
collaborations.
B
ANQUET

The Banquet will be Thursday evening from 7:00
10:30 p.m. in the La Nouvelle Orleans Room.

Since
the banquet is included in the registration fee this is a
great opportunity to sample the renowned cuisine of
the Monteleone Hotel. The evening will include
banquet speaker, David J. Hand, Professor of
Statistics at Imperial College, and an award
presentation for the best paper in the first ten volumes
of Statistics and Computing.
D
INING

Apart from the banquet, meals will be on your own.
New Orleans is known for its unique cuisine so this is
an opportunity for you to try out some of the area
restaurants. A restaurant guide put together by the
conference chairs will be available at the registration
table. The hotel concierge can help with lunch and
dining reservations.
I
NTERNET
A
CCESS

There are telephone access lines in the hotel rooms to
accommodate computers or fax machines. The
Monteleone Business Center provides computers, fax
machines, secretarial services and many other special
services you may require.
M
ESSAGES

A message board will be on display beside the
registration table.
S
PEAKER
P
RACTICE
R
OOM

A speaker practice room with an overhead projector
and screen will be available on Thursday and Friday
from 7:00 a.m.5:00 p.m. in the Bienville Room.
K
EYNOTE
A
DDRESS

The Interface 2000 Keynote Address will be Thursday,
8:00 a.m. The Keynote speaker is Grace Wahba,
John Bascom Professor of Statistics and Professor of
Biostatistics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

4
P
ROCEEDINGS
I
NFORMATION FOR
P
RESENTERS

Computing Science and Statistics
, Volume 33, will
be produced as a CD-ROM rather than a paper
version. This planned production of the Interface
2000 proceedings will have several beneficial effects
for Interface 2000 authors. First of all, the page
restrictions formerly in place for the paper versions
will be raised. Both invited and contributed authors
are allowed to submit twenty pages of manuscript
including text and graphics. This is an increase from
6 pages for invited speakers and 4 pages for
contributed speakers. In addition, authors are
encouraged to submit their PowerPoint
presentations, animations (mpegs, avis), and
software source code. It is anticipated that there will
be enough space for all materials to be included.
The format for papers will remain as in previous
years, a two-column format with printed size 8.5 by
11 inches. A LaTeX template is available on the
Interface website
(http://www.galaxy.gmu.edu/stats/IFNA.html).
Papers will be produced in an Adobe pdf format on
the CD. Papers can be submitted in a variety of
formats including MS Word files, LaTeX files, TeX
files, EXP files, postscript files, and Adobe pdf files.
This first year, we also will accept paper versions for
authors without the capability to provide electronic
versions. Please note that graphics included in pdf
files are compressed and may not be as legible as
desired. This seems particularly true for pdf files
produced from LaTeX and TeX files. Please verify
that the graphics are legible before submitting pdf
files. Authors are encouraged to use full-page
graphics for this reason and are encouraged to
submit graphics as separate files (gif files for line
drawings, jpg files for continuous tone images, eps
files for either).
As this will be Interfaces first experience
producing a professional CD volume, authors are
encouraged to be flexible and to work with the
publisher. It is planned to have both an Acrobat and
an HTML interface for the CD. Papers must be
submitted to Interface by July 15, 2000. Email
submissions are preferred. Send electronic files to
interface@galaxy.gmu.edu.
S
PECIAL
E
XCURSION

Interface 2000 will offer an excursion into the Garden
District of New Orleans on Friday evening beginning at
6:45 p.m. The cost of the excursion is $20.00 and will
include bus transportation to a two-hour walking tour of
the Garden District and Lafayette No. 1 Cemetery.
The Garden District is located uptown and is bounded
by St. Charles and Magazine Streets. It is one of the
most beautiful areas in the city. The Lafayette No. 1
Cemetery in the Garden District is bounded by
Washington, Prytania, and Coliseum Streets. New
Orleans is famous for her cemeteries, and this is a
rare opportunity to view this miniature city of above-
ground tombs at night. The tour will end at 9:00 p.m.
at the Lafayette No. 1 Cemetery across the street from
the famous Commander's Palace Restaurant. Bus
transportation will be provided back to the French
Quarter.
Participants can choose to stay in the Garden
District and eat at the Commander's Palace (call 504-
899-