So in the year 2009, the ISI congress was hosted in the Africa at Durban, the Kwa-Zulu city in South Africa. Prior preparations culminated in many ideas among which was encouraging the formation of the African Young Statisticians, AYS. I am happy to associate myself to the AYS because I was one of the founding members and beneficiary of the AYS. During the last ISI congress in Dublin, not only was the congress in Africa referred to as the best ever, but also the Young Statistician innovation upheld and this was looked at as a missing link in all the previous congresses.

During the 2011 version of the SASA conference that I ably attended and also presented a paper titled “parametric framework to the analysis of aircraft delay”, I found that there is an arching desire to monopolize publications in statistical journals by a few authors! There is no way, we can encourage the young statisticians without giving them an opportunity to improve and publish their papers.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year, 2012.

Firstly, I have to be an Elected Member for ISI before the year 2011 ends! This year is remarkable because the ISI held its 58th Session in Dublin, a city very closely similar to Durban where it held its 57th Session! Both cities have six characters, all the characters are similar except only two and both cities are ports for their countries! Secondly, I have to develop and present crosscutting statistical methodology at the next ISI WSC to be held in 2013 and 2015 at Hong Kong and Rio de Janeiro respectively. Thirdly,.. send me an email at wesonga@wesonga.com and I will continue to tell you.

Among the achievements so far towards the Mahalanobis Award is the fact that as one of the pioneer African Young Statisticians, AYS, we founded ISIBALO during the ISIDurban 2009. An idea that has sold and penetrated deep into the cycles of ISI membership. ISIBALO comes from SIBALO, a word from my mother tongue meaning STATISTICS (or simply Mathematics)! In South Africa, the word is now entrenched into its education system as a mode of developing statistics or generally mathematical sciences through students’ competitions.

Nonetheless, statistical science has got numerous applications and it is the reason for the existence of both living and non-living things!

Did you know that the ISI 2011 award holder of the Mahalanobis Award is Professor Victor Yohai from Argentina.  Professor Yohai, Emeritus Professor of the University of Buenos Aires, is internationally recognized as an outstanding scientist, a generous teacher and one of the leading experts in Robust Statistics. He has provided a lifetime of groundbreaking contributions to the fields of mathematical and computational Statistics with an enormous knowledge, also beyond his main themes of research. Professor Yohai’s impressive body of research includes fundamental advances in statistical thinking and numerous technical breakthroughs that span over forty years.

At the international level, the millennium development goals MDGs have clear set targets to be achieved by the year 2015. MDG 1, target 1 for example, resonate a world free of extreme poverty, where this is defined as earning less than a dollar per day. In Uganda, this translates into being able to buy about three-quarters of a kilogramme of sugar a day. Using this measure therefore implies that if someone in Uganda is able to buy 285 kilogrammes of sugar in a year, then one is regarded as not living in extreme poverty. But what is the human wellness worth for 285 kilogrammes of sugar in a whole year!

Despite all these attempts indicating both national and international good will towards alleviating livelihoods of people across the world, the standards of living have in the hard terms consistently deteriorated over time. There are many factors that come into play to aid one in theorising the actual root cause of this anomalous trend of events.

The unilateral analysis model (UAM) of how the developed nations made it indicates to the fact that they inevitably exploited both natural and human resources for a far selfish need. Can the less developed nations follow the same theory of development? This is very unlikely because of the imminent global initiatives to reverse the effects of climate change.

The bilateral analysis model (BAM) of development points at a key subject of giving back to the least developing countries in terms of developmental assistance. But has been successful? A quick no explained by implementation loopholes that form either reversal (backward siphoning) or forward loss (corruption). The efforts by the developed countries towards alleviating their sister non-developed are commendable, but the cancer of bad governance has heavily curtailed the good causes and intentions of the BAM model.

The conference code named ‘eLearning Africa’ was the continent’s premier annual conference on ICT-enhanced learning which was hosted by Tanzania that showcased a wealth of proposals that promises to stimulate thought and discussion for the future of the people on the African continent. A number of speakers were selected from different disciplines to give key note addresses, but the official opening was done by the Vice President of the United Republic of Tanzania.

Among the keynote speakers were; Mr Jenerali Ulimwengu, well known in Tanzania and throughout East Africa as the host of a popular television talk show ‘Jenerali on Monday,’ Mr Ulimwengu is also a media mogul and the Chairman of Raia Mwema, a political newspaper, who although not an ICT expert, I think gave the most thrilling speech of the Conference entitled ‘ What we learn, how we learn it and for what.’ Others were: Lieut. Gen. Karlheinz Viereck who began his military career with the Bundeswehr in 1970; Jim Adams who is a Vice President of the East Asia and Pacific Region, at the World Bank; Rev. Emmanuel Kingsley Dadebo, who is the Co-ordinator of ICT in Education Programmes of the Ghana Ministry of Education, Science and Sports; Michael Trucano who is the World Bank’s Senior ICT and Education Policy Specialist, serving as the Bank’s focal point on the topic within the education sector; Larry Cooperman who is the director of UCI’s OpenCourseWare project; Dr Bakary Diallo who has worked in the education sector for the past 20 years as a secondary school teacher, an academic, a consultant, a project administrator and a researcher.

Individual topics range from eBook clubs in Uganda and multimedia storytelling in Tanzania to eBusiness among women in Nigeria and school governance in Francophone Africa. Others included; “Innovation and investment in innovation will help grow Africa”, How high-speed Internet is boosting economic growth in Africa, Promoting farming to young people in Tanzania – a most welcome idea, Promoting farming to young people in Tanzania – a most welcome ideaWazup? How digital technologies are transforming the lives of young Africans, Promoting farming to young people in Tanzania – a most welcome idea, ICT hero from Kilimanjaro foothills wins conference scholarship, ECOWAS to sponsor eLearning Africa participation, Bridging the technology gap with Free and Open Source Software among others.

There is a lot for us to learn, educate and do towards economic development endeavours through the use of Information and Communication Technologies whether or not the environment is conducive.

Yes we are on track to building for the future.

• First principles show that Science is an Art and Art is a Science. Clearly, this indicates that there exists intersecting components between Science and Art. However, the extent of this non-nullity intersection is what may not be clear. And this is what normally creates contention while sparking debate by scholars of either disciplines.

• Other similarity between Science and Art is the fact both academic disciplines deal with discrete objects. This indicates the non-existence of continuous objects because such objects are referred to as indefinite or still in formation stage since they do not occupy known space in time. Further analysis of ‘discrete objects’ in the definitions reveals that sometimes Art is a subset of Science because of the strict boundedness of study of the discrete objects by the Arts discipline.

Let’s now attempt to define the commonly popular physical sciences that include; Statistics, Economics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Technology.

1. Statistics is the science of figures
2. Economics is the science of economic figures; hence summarily Economics is a subset of statistics. Oh! then, it was not necessary having it here because it has created no impact defining it! Okay, let’s continue…
3. Mathematics is the science of the theory of figures. Not quite sure, but if you are studying figures, you are most likely going to study their theory! So this also sounds like it is also a subset of Statistics…
4. Computer Science is the science of Statistics. Conversely, Computer Science is the Science of information generation which ultimately is one major activity of Statistics. Let me just leave this for you to draw a conclusion.
5. Technology is the science of Art and Mathematics. Conversely, Technology is the science of determining shape, form and nature of discrete objects.

Over to you to supplement and make a conclusion…Above all – ABOVE ALL Don williams

The second probably not easily noticeable contradiction is embedded in the statement itself “I wish you a happy new year.” Shouldn’t one be more optimistic and say “I wish you a happier new year”! From time immemorial, human being always has an optimistic tendancy to life. Why then should one prefer to be pessimistic when it comes to new year wishes? Is the old year always unhappy so as to justify the happy new year wish? Analytically, if the previous year was a happy one, then it makes no difference wishing me a year with the same level of happiness!

I wish you all a Happier New Year, 2011.

Aviation and meteorological data sources at Entebbe International Airport for the period 2004 to 2008 on daily basis were used for exploratory data analysis, modelling and simulation purposes. Exploratory data analysis involved logistic modeling for which post-logistic model analysis estimated the average probability of departure delay to be 49 percent while that for arrival delay was 36 percent. These computations were based on a delay threshold level at 60 percent which had more representative significant number of predicators of nine and ten for departure and arrival respectively. The proportion of the number of aircrafts that delay was established to follow an autoregressive integrated moving average, ARIMA (1,1,1) time series.

The stochastic frontier model estimated the average inefficiencies of aircraft operations over the period to be 15 percent and 20 percent at departure and arrival respectively. Three stochastic optimisation models were developed by relating airport utility and the interaction effect of daily probabilities of delay and inefficiency estimates. The three models measure daily airport utility at aircraft departures, arrivals and aggregated aircraft departures and arrivals. In this formulation, the stochastic frontier model inefficiency estimates and the post-logistic delay probability estimates were used as inputs into the stochastic optimisation models to enforce the models’ theoretical underpinning.

Model sensitivity analysis adduced that the utility level for a given time period at an airport with higher levels of inefficiency was less than the utility level with lower levels of inefficiency. Furthermore, lower estimates of probabilities for departure and arrival delay resulted into a higher operational utility level of the airport. Further analyses suggest that at this airport, utility of daily delay is greater during aircraft departures 92 percent than at aircraft arrivals 91 percent. Thus, to maximise airport utility over a time period, measures have to be developed to improve overall timeliness of aircraft operations so as to attract accelerated sustainable development. Therefore, more investments are required in human resources to develop more practical tools that inform air traffic management process. Others include equipment and automatic weather monitoring systems in order to reduce the likelihood of aircraft delay and the related technical inefficiency parameters.

I have started working on some papers, to publish so as I don’t perish! And will keep you all posted on the events as they systematically unfold

I salute you all! I will be presenting a PhD defence on the 21st October, 2010 at 2pm at Makerere University, Kampala-Uganda. It is about a very interesting title ” stochastic optimisation models for air traffic management.” I would like to invite you all to attend. Below is the abstract of the thesis for defence.

Air traffic delay is not only a source of inconvenience to the aviation passenger, but also a major deterrent to the optimisation of airport utility, especially in the developing countries. Many developing countries do less to abate this otherwise seemingly invincible constraint to development. The overall objective of this study was to investigate the dynamics of air traffic delays and to develop stochastic optimisation models that mitigate delays and facilitate efficient air traffic management.

Aviation and meteorological data sources at Entebbe International Airport for the period 2004 to 2008 on daily basis were used for exploratory data analysis, modelling and simulation purposes. Exploratory data analysis involved logistic modeling for which post-logistic model analysis estimated the average probability of departure delay to be 49 percent while that for arrival delay was 36 percent. These computations were based on a delay threshold level at 60 percent which had more representative significant number of predicators of nine and ten for departure and arrival respectively. The proportion of the number of aircrafts that delay was established to follow an autoregressive integrated moving average, ARIMA (1,1,1) time series.

The stochastic frontier model estimated the average inefficiencies of aircraft operations over the period to be 15 percent and 20 percent at departure and arrival respectively. Three stochastic optimisation models were developed to create a relationship between the airport utility and the proportions of delay. The three models measure airport utility at aircraft departures, at aircraft arrivals and the third one for aggregated aircraft departures and arrivals. In this formulation, the proportion of aircraft delay was treated as a plummeting element of the airport utility. Stochastic frontier model inefficiency estimates and the post-logistic delay probability estimates were used as inputs into the stochastic optimisation models to enforce the models’ theoretical underpinning.

Model sensitivity analysis adduced that the utility level for a given time period at the airport with higher levels of inefficiency was less than the utility level with lower levels of inefficiency. Furthermore, lower estimates of probabilities for departure and arrival delay resulted into a lower operational utility level of the airport. Further analysis suggested that at this airport, proportion of daily delay is greater for aircraft departures than during arrivals. Thus to maximise airport utility over a time period, measures have to be developed to improve overall timeliness of aircraft operations so as to attract accelerated sustainable development. Therefore, more investments are required in human resources, equipment and automatic weather monitoring systems in order to reduce the likelihood of aircraft delay and the related technical inefficiency parameters.

Keywords: Arrival delay, departure delay, proportions, stochastic optimisation models

There are some key elements that form the core requirements for a bigger vision for Africa of which any country whose governance system applies them is graded as more developed. One of them is learning from history, and preserving the good history to building on. Professor Ahmed Mohiddin, who studied and lectured at Makerere University, is a moving encyclopedia of the African leaders who have made Africa proud as far as sustaining good history is concerned and also otherwise in pursuit for a bigger vision for Africa. The other key elements are i) avoiding the blame game ii) amicably  managing diversity iii) change process management iv) commitment and transparency v) accountability to the citizens vi) practicing self-last theory in governance vii) protecting constitutionalism viii) rule of law ix) professionalism (as a governance practice, human development and consultations) and x) democracy and human rights protection.

Africa Governance Report is a project by UNECA and UNDP to assess and monitor the progress towards good governance in Africa by identifying capacity gaps in governance institutions and subsequently propose policy interventions to promote good governance. So far, two publications have been made; AGR I that was published in the year 2005 applied three methods of statistical data collection; the expert panel survey, the household survey and the desk research to develop seven chapters of the report. AGR II was published in the year 2009 and used the same methodology as AGR I, with a target of a representative sample of 100 experts. On the other hand, AGR III intends to use expert panel, focus group discussions and desk research to collect data focusing on the otherwise tricky theme of elections and the management of diversity. The fascinating aspect of AGR is the fact that it is locally created by Africans and for Africans, hence a greater possibility of ownership. The other is that it’s collaborative nature between UNECA, UNDP regional and country offices, the national research institutions and the experts at country level.

Over to you…