Associate Professor Ray Watson
Consulting
I have been involved in many statistical consulting jobs — mainly for clients from other departments within the university: including Surgery, Civil Engineering, Agriculture, Otolaryngology, Anatomy, Psychology and Pathology; but also a number of external clients: including Meat Standards Australia, ACA, Esso and Telstra. My major consulting activity for the past few years has been my ongoing involvement in developing a meat quality measure for Meat Standards Australia.
Research
My main research interest has been in stochastic processes and in particular population models — particularly in producing usable approximations for stochastic models to overcome the inadequacy of deterministic models on the one hand and the intractability of the stochastic models on the other. This has led to an interest in martingale central limit theorems and random time scale transformations as useful tools in such endeavours.
I retain an active interest in population modelling and inference for such models. However, my research interests are quite diverse and include work in education and applied statistics. I have published papers in distribution theory, sample size determination and survival analysis.
Current research projects include:
- Modelling probability of fault detection (Cayt Harding, Caz Nickson).
- Epidemic modelling and data analysis (Paul Yip).
- Inference in recapture and removal experiments (Paul Yip).
- Sport statistics and modelling.
- Models for discrete failure times and their statistical analysis.
- Interpretation of confidence intervals, p-values; and discrediting p_rep. (Ian Gordon)
- Estimating the mean, even in adverse circumstances (Ian Gordon).
- Group testing (Graham Hepworth).
- Binomial sequences and their asymptotic behaviour.
Some of my current and past research papers:
In progress
- Harding, Watson, Sharpe & Hugo, “An improved 95% confidence limit for probability of detection using a log-normal model”.
- Gordon & Watson. “Getting the three Rs right: Replication, Randomness and Realisation”.
- Gordon & Watson. “Misunderstanding confidence intervals”.
- Nickson, Kavanagh & Watson. "Not by any measure: The optimum breast density measurement tool for targetting breast cancer screening programs".
- Nickson, Kavanagh & Watson. “A model for the life course of breast density”.
- Nickson, Kavanagh & Watson. “Modelling the impact of targetted changes to screening intervals in Australian breast-screening programs”.
- Nickson, Kavanagh & Watson. “Modelling the effects of breast density on screening for breast cancer”.
- Polkinghorne, Nishimura, Neath & Watson. “Sensory rating of Japanese and Australian beef cuts, and potential for prediction of Japanese consumer rating”.
- Polkinghorne, Nishimura, Neath & Watson. “Comparison of Japanese and Australian consumers for sensory perception of beef”.
Submitted papers
- Xi, Watson & Yip, “Estimation in capture-recapture models when covariates are subject to measurement errors or missing data”. submitted to Canadian Journal of Statistics
- Xi, Lam, Yip & Watson. “A Discrete-time sequential test for constant fatality rate of an emerging epidemic: with applications to severe acute respiratory syndrome in Hong Kong and Beijing” submitted to Statistics in Medicine.
- Polkinghorne, Nishimura, Neath & Watson. “Japanese consumer sensory perception in relation to beef”, submitted to Animal Science Journal.
Accepted papers
- Yip, Watson, et al. (2009) “Estimation of the number of people in a demonstration” accepted by ANZJS
- Watson, Brand, Watson & LoGiudice. (2009) “Delirium in the eldery. Environmental management strategies: a survey of Melbourne hospitals” accepted by Australian Health Review.
- Novak & Watson. (2009) “Using Single Packet Probing to Estimate Arrival Rate”accepted by Queueing Systems.
Recent published papers
- Hepworth & Watson. (2009) “Debiased estimators for group testing” Applied Statistics 58: 1, 105-121.
- Xi, Watson & Yip. (2008) “The minimum capture proportion for reliable estimation in capture-recapture models”, Biometrics 64: 242-249.
- Watson. (2008) “Meta-analysis of the published effects of HGP use on beef palatability in steers as measured by objective and sensory testing”, Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture 48: 11, 1425-1433.
- Watson, Gee, Polkinghorne & Rooke (2008) “Consumer assessment of eating quality – Development of protocols for MSA testing”, Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture 48: 11, 1360-1367.
- Polkinghorne, Thompson, Watson, Gee and Porter (2008) “The evolution of the Meat Standards Australia (MSA) grading system”, Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture 48: 11, 1351-1359.
- Watson, Polkinghorne & Thompson (2008) “Development of a grading model to predict consumer palatability of the carcass” Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture . 48: 11, 1368-1379.
- Watson, Polkinghorne, Gee, Porter, Thompson, Ferguson, Pethick, McIntyre (2008) “The effect of hormonal growth promotants on palatability of various muscles from Bos indicus cross steers and heifers” Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture 48: 11, 1415-1424.
- Polkinghorne, Watson, Thompson and Pethick (2008) “Current usage of the MSA grading system in Australia and international developments” Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture. 48: 11, 1459-1464
- Yip, Watson & Chen (2007) “Estimation of vaccine efficacy and the vaccination threshold”, Statistics in Medicine 26: 4475-4488.
- Xi, Yip & Watson (2007) “A Unified Likelihood-based Approach for Estimating Population Size in Continuous-Time Capture-Recapture Experiments with Frailty”, Biometrics 63: 228-236.
- Yip, Yang, Ip, Law & Watson (2007) “A study on financial debts and suicides in Hong Kong SAR”, Journal of Applied Social Psychology 37: 2788-2799.
- Xi, Yip & Watson (2006) Estimating population size in a continuous-time removal experiment with a known sub-population size ratio. Environmental and Ecological Statistics, 13:109-126.
- Fang, Watson, Yan & Yip (2004) A procedure for complete fault detection with a removal process . J. Stat. Planning & Inference, 117: 1-14.
- Liu, Yip & Watson (2003) Removal process estimation of population size for a population with a known sex ratio. Environmental and Ecological Statistics, 10: 281-292.
- Ng & Watson (2002) A non-identifiability in modelling discrete failure times Australian & New Zealand Journal of Statistics, 44: 467-478.
- Watson & Williams (2002) Martingale generating functions for Markov chains. J. Stat. Planning & Inference. 103: 39-49.
Some older papers
- Gordon & Watson (1996) The myth of continuity-corrected sample size formulae. Biometrics. 52: 72-77.
- Watson & Yip (1993) A Bivariate counting process. J. Appl.Prob. 30: 353-364.
- Adams & Watson (1989) A discrete time parametric model for survival analysis. Aust. J. Statist. 31: 365-384.
- Watson & Gordon (1986) On quantiles of sums. Aust. J. Statist. 28: 192-199.
- Watson (1981) An application of a martingale central limit theorem to the standard epidemic model. Stoch. Proc.Applicns. 11: 79-89.
- Watson (1980) On the size distribution for some epidemic models, J. Appl. Prob., 17: 912-921.
- Anderson & Watson (1980) On the spread of a disease with gamma distributed latent and infectious periods, Biometrika, 67: 191-198.
- Watson (1975) An application of martingale methods to conflict models,
Opns. Res., 24: 380-382.
Teaching
I have been most closely involved with the second year course for Statistics majors, 620-201 (Probability) and 620-202 (Statistics), but I have taught a wide variety of undergraduate courses: indeed, I had the unique distinction of, at some time or another, having been involved in teaching all of the units offered by the now non-existent Statistics department, including third year units in Probability, Statistical Inference, Stochastic Processes, Decision Theory, Linear Models, Design of Experiments, Time Series, Distribution-free Methods, Sample Surveys and even Operations Research and Linear Programming. I have also given several fourth year courses including courses in Stochastic Processes and Survival Analysis.
In 2009, I am involved in teaching 620-168 (Experimental Design and Data Analysis) and 620-370 (Statistics for Mechanical Engineers).