Born in Roma, Italy in 1946, married, with five children.
PhD, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the faculty of Architecture ValleGiulia at Roma University "La Sapienza".

Dipartimento di Matematica "Guido Castelnuovo", Università di Roma "La Sapienza"
Address: Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5, 00185 Roma Italy.
Office: 13 Ground Floor
Telephone: +3906.4991.3266
FAX: +3906.4470.1007
E-mail: sergio.camiz@uniroma1.it
Web pages: www.camiz.net www.camiz.com

1. PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE AND INTERESTS

Ph.D. in Science, Data Analysis, held in France in 2002 (University of Paris IX Dauphine), with thesis on «Contribution to Data Analysis Methods based on Application Examples» directed by Pierre Cazes. Italian laurea degree in Pure Mathematics in 1969 (University of Roma La Sapienza), with thesis on «Structure Theory of Fields», Classical Studies at High school, Professional qualification of Photographer.

Professional experience as music player and singer, photographer, computer programmer (Fortran), data analyst (with applications in ecology, vegetation science, economics, urban geography, history, and archeology), survey statistician, instructor in many fields (music, photography, mathematics, computer science, statistics and data analysis).

Italian mother tongue; excellent knowledge of English and French, good of Spanish, medium of Portuguese.

Personal interests: travels, cinema, photography, classical music, literature, interaction with people.
Sports: high mountain excursions, sailing; in the past, horse riding, skiing.

2. PROFESSIONAL CV

3. MAIN RESEARCH FIELDS

3.1 Data analysis

Presently, the research activity is performed with his correspondents in South-America and in Lille (France). It concerns on one side the revision of exploratory factor analysis techniques, with an attempt to improve their performance, validation, interpretation aids, and the graphical tools; on the other side it concerns the development of factorial classification of variables methods, aiming at associating to each hierarchy node a factor plane of representation.

3.2 Ecology

Two researches are currently in progress: one concerns the tree-ring time-series, on the point of view of the data analysis methods to use to get chronologies and further deal with them. The other concerns the «El Niño » phenomenon, the climatic oscillation of Pacific Ocean that influences the coastal regions in what concerns the climate (precipitations) and the fishing activity. Here it id necessary to extract from large data bases the information that may be connected with the phenomenon and derive useful practical tools.

3.3 Foundation of Topology and Geometry

Aside of data analysis studies, attention is devoted to the foundation of topology and geometry, for their introduction to Architecture studies. In particular, attention is drawn on the general topology grounding of the concept of filter. This approach allows to see both most topological definitions and the limits theory in a unified form.

3.4 The thesis

The content of the thesis has been the most important commitment since long. Albeit homogenized, it is indeed a thesis on works, in which each chapter deals with a topic independent on the others, even if with strong technical interactions. Here the subjects are briefly outlined, with special attention to the future developments.

1) Interpretation aids for cross-classifications. It is a method, proposed by Denimal (1997), that was further developed together. Specifically conceived for contingency data tables, they revealed a precious help for the structuring of vegetation tables and for both interpretation and communication of the results. The extension to other kind of tables is forecast.

2) Negative eigenvalues in data analysis. The negative eigenvalues of empirical distance matrices are in principle considered unacceptable, although their weak value may suggest that Euclidean distances are biased. It was possible to show a possible interpretation of the eigenvectors corresponding to the negative eigenvalue and a pseudo-Euclidean metrics is proposed, analogous to the one adopted in relativity theory, to understand the results. This allowed an original interpretation of such eigenvalues and it was shown that the representation of distances in the sub-space spanned by the eigenvectors corresponding to positive eigenvalues has a quality equivalent to the best optimal scaling method currently used. The method works better than the non-metric ones found in literature.

3) Input/output matrices. The exploratory analysis of input/output matrices, in particular of those describing an economic system, may be performed through graph theory methods, that enable a graphical representation both of main flows of goods through the economy sectors and of the most important blocks of economy, that is those sectors that exchange goods among themselves in all directions. In this case, graphs representing the flows structure are helpful for a suitable description of the phenomenon. A computer package was developed, able at analyzing and graphically representing an I/O matrix.

4) Vegetation data. The first study concerns the identification of the optimal dimension of relevés, in relation with the information richness. It was found that the Statis method (Lavit, 1988) applied to a spatial process, consisting in progressively enlarging the dimension of the relevés, allows the identification of the optimal dimension, as it is estimated by the Juhász-Nagy (1976 ; 1984) model, a model highly demanding in terms of sample size. The second study concerns the theoretical problems tied to the optimal structuring of a vegetation table, by approximating a block structure. Semi-automatic procedures have been outlined and partially implemented. In this framework an original interpretation of the Guttman effect was found, that asks or a revision of the literature on the subject aiming at its removal. In this framework, the interpretation aids to cross-classifications revealed useful for the reading of structured tables and for the comparison of classes issued by different analyses.

5) Data analysis of urban services. In this framework, in which the reference is the Christaller (1933) model of the urban ranks, the study aims at integrate the identification of the ranks with a typology. As a result, two co-occurrent structures were identified: the urban rank and the urban type. In this framework, an original point of view comes from phytosociology, by proposing the characteristic elements of every structure. For this aim, several methods were used, in particular the rank analysis, based on Orlóci (1978) but using a chi-square metrics, that allows a better knowledge of this structure. The use of interpretation tools of cross-classifications was proved useful for the definition of the co-occurrent structures.

6) Seals images analysis. The seals were found in the Near-Middle East belonging to the Uruk / Jamdat Nasr period (IV-III-th millennium b.c.). Special coding techniques were developed to study the seals on the iconographic content point of view, since the classical coding was not apt to describe sufficiently well the complex image structure. Indeed, it is important to know the different iconographical elements that form an image, how they are tied to form sub-images and which is the syntactical structure of the image obtained by connecting sub-images. Different coding were used, in particular the classical one, for the study of the single elements; then a textual coding for describing the sub-images through a formalized text; eventually, a hierarchical symbolic sequence was used to describe the syntactical relations among the sub-images. As for the first two coding, correspondence analysis was used, for the latter it has been necessary to develop a special method for computing distances.

3.5 Studies on education of mathematics

Based on the experience of teaching in the faculty of Architecture, whose students formation is very far from mathematical experience, studies are carried out on the possible ways of teaching both modern (Logic, Set theory, Topology) and classical mathematics (Calculus, Geometry) to non-mathematics students. In particular, the different forma mentis is taken into account, thus suggesting to tailor the lecturing style to homogeneous groups of students.

3.6 Laurea theses

Since 1983, over 45 laurea theses were directed, concerning students with four-years curriculum in Mathematics. The subjects were usually tied to the researches in progress. Nearly 20 others were assisted in what concerned data analysis matters, for students in Economics, Political Sciences, and Natural Sciences.

4. AFFILIATIONS
Conseil Scientifique de l'Environement Nord-Pas de Calais;
Società Italiana di Statistica (SIS);
Società Italiana di Studi Elettorali (SISE);
Société Francophone de Classification (SFC);
Société Française de Statistique (SFdS).