The Oceanography Society (TOS) started in 1988; its first meeting was in Monterey in 1989. Since then, the biennial scientific meetings of the Society have been in St. Petersburg, Florida (1991), Seattle (1993), Newport, Rhode Island (1995), and most recently again in Seattle (1997). In addition, TOS has sponsored a Pacific Basin meeting in Honolulu in 1994, and its first international meeting in Amsterdam in 1996. Its second international meeting is planned for Paris, in June 1998, on the theme of Coastal and Marginal Seas. The attendance at these meetings is shown in Figure 1. You might argue that something awful happened between 1993 and 1994, or you might argue that the stable attendance at TOS meetings is around 300, and that 91 and 93 were anomalies. This is an interesting problem in data analysis.

Briscoe, M.G. 1997. Review and comment—Meeting report for Seattle, 1997: Some personal remarks. Oceanography 10(3):147–148, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.1997.12.

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