I am thrilled and proud to announce the addition of Roxanne Feldpausch to Catherine Hood Consulting. Roxanne is the original designer and developer of the Windows Interface to X-12. She also has experience in modeling time series using regARIMA models and using the models for forecasting, outlier detection, and to aid in seasonal adjustment. Her research has led to many changes in the X-12-ARIMA software, including a F-test for determining if a series has stable seasonality that can be modeled with fixed seasonal effect regressors and determining the optimal length for sliding span with when using a SEATS seasonal adjustment.
Roxanne has over 10 years of experience as a statistician, and Roxanne and Catherine worked together at the Census Bureau for several years.
Mark your calendars! Catherine Hood Consulting is offering the "Seasonal Adjustment with X-13-ARIMA-SEATS" course on March 9-11, 2011 at the Hyatt Place Opryland in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Census Bureau has announced the release of X-13-ARIMA-SEATS at the end of 2010. To keep up with the advances in seasonal adjustment, it is important for producers of seasonally adjusted data to learn about both ARIMA-model-based and X-11-based seasonal adjustment, as well as regARIMA modeling. X-13-ARIMA-SEATS contains all of the features of the Census Bureau's X-12-ARIMA and adds the ability to compute ARIMA-model-based seasonal adjustment with an implementation of the program SEATS (developed by Agustin Maravall at the Bank of Spain).
Why Nashville? One reason is that it's close to Catherine Hood Consulting headquarters. "Music City USA" certainly describes Nashville, where were is plenty of live music every night, and not all of it country or bluegrass. Nashville is home not only to the Grand Ole Opry House, Country Music Hall of Fame, Ryman Auditorium, and the General Jackson Showboat, but is close to several great state parks and world-class golf courses. And after you've taken in the excitement of the area, you can also take in the comfort of a plate of slow-cooked Southern barbecue.
For more information about the course, please see the Seasonal Adjustment with X-13-ARIMA-SEATS page.
For more information about the hotel and accomodations, please see the web page for the Hyatt Place Opryland. Click here to open a new browser window. In a few months, I will have a page set up with the room information, too.
The first on-line course, "Introduction to Seasonal Adjustment," was released on August 1. Early-bird discounts are available until December 1. Individual courses are $180 until December 1. Group rates are also available.
More information on the course itself is on the web at Introduction to Seasonal Adjustment On-line Course. To register for the course, or to get details on group discounts, please email Catherine or our information desk ("info" at catherinechhood.net).
The "Seasonal Adjustment with X-12-ARIMA" will be available on-line sometime in December 2010. People who have taken the Introduction course will get a discount for the new course.
If you are curious about the format of the courses, please check out the free "Why Seasonal Adjustment" sample course.
Due to the many request I've had for more information on "how to fix" M diagnostics when they fail, I've added a new section to the Diagnostics FAQ.
The United Nations has declared that October 20th is World Statistics Day --- "Celebrating the many contributions and achievements of official statistics." For more information, please see UN Statistics Day site. If you prefer to write dates "European style," like I do, then the date is 20/10/2010, which is very cool.
Autumn is a time to think about the harvest, and there are many fun holidays this season: October 27 is Potato Day, October 29 is Oatmeal Day, November 3 is Sandwich Day, November 12 is Pizza with the Works Day, and November 14 is National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day.
Comments and suggestions are welcome. Please email "info" at catherinechhood.net with your ideas.
Page design by David Joyce at Exit 42 Design
Web content by Catherine Hood Consulting, Copyright 2006-2010