It is with great pleasure that the Irish Statistical Association announces that registration is now open for the Gosset Lecture, which takes place at 6:00pm on Thursday 26th October in the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin. Registration for this lecture is required as places are limited. Register via the following Eventbrite link https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/gosset-lecture-tickets-725983324667. Note that …
The ISA Gosset lecture 2021 will be delivered by Professor Dianne Cook (Monash University) on Wednesday 3rd February at 9:30am.
This will be a virtual event which is free to attend, but registration is necessary: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/isa-gosset-lecture-2021-tickets-136937338265.
Can computers relieve data analysts of the arduous task of graphically diagnosing models?
Computer vision has come a long way in recent years. The models produced can now be used to automatically inspect the quality of items emerging along production lines, identify objects in photos and even navigate an autonomous vehicle.
Despite the fact that visualisation plays a major role in data analysis, the use and interpretation of graphics by data scientists/statisticians is subjective. Analysts rely almost entirely on their own judgement, years of experience and an implicit calculation of uncertainty when interpreting graphics. Considering data plots as a type of statistic encourages towards an inferential approach to reading data plots. By formalising data visualisation in this way, we can explore the possibility of training a computer vision model to do this visual inference task.
In this talk, I will give an introduction to these ideas and then present the results of computer vision model for evaluating residual plots, used for diagnosing statistical model fits, comparing them to human evaluations of the same plots. Who do you think wins?
The ISA Gosset lecture 2018 will be delivered by Professor Trevor Hastie (Stanford University) in the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson St., Dublin on Thursday 13th December at 6:00pm.
Abstract: As our ability to gather and store data improves, we are faced with the task of analysing these ever-growing mounds of information. This has required Statisticians to gain computing and database skills, and Engineers and Computer Scientists to learn statistical modelling and data analysis. The result is a data scientist, one of the hottest job-descriptions in the tech world. In this talk I will give some examples of big data and data-science challenges, and explore some approaches in detail.
Please note tickets are required. These are available free of charge at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gosset-lecture-2018-tickets-50225732518
In the event of over subscription, admission will be on a first come first served basis on the night.
A reception will follow the talk.
The ISA Gosset lecture 2017 will be delivered by the distinguished Professor David Hand OBE (Imperial College London) in the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson St., Dublin on April 6th at 6:00pm.
Please note tickets are required. These are available free of charge at https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/isa-gosset-lecture-2017-tickets-32088704178
The dangers of not seeing what isn’t there: selection bias in statistical modelling.
In general, in statistics and data science, more is better in the sense that larger data sets mean that smaller effects can be detected and more confidence can be placed in any statistical conclusions. But this is only true if we have confidence that the data represent the underlying reality fairly. All too often the available data have undergone unobserved selection or distortion processes, which can mean they are potentially misleading. This applies in human interactions – where it has been suggested that the notion that ‘data=all’ can replace the need for careful theorising and statistical modelling – but also in the hard sciences and medicine.This talk gives examples of such cases, showing how ignorance of selection mechanisms has led to mistakes and even disasters. These mechanisms are described, and strategies for tackling the problem are outlined.This event is run in partnership with the Irish Statistical Association. It will be followed by a reception partially sponsored by Diageo.
The inaugural ISA Gosset lecture 2014 will be delivered by Professor Adrian E. Raftery (University of Washington) in the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson St., Dublin on May 29th at 6:30pm.
Please note tickets are required. These are available free of charge at https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/population-projections-for-all-countries-tickets-11052998817
Population Projections for All Countries
Projections of countries’ future populations, broken down by age and sex, are widely used for planning and research. They are mostly done deterministically, but there is a widespread need for probabilistic projections. This lecture will describe a Bayesian statistical method for probabilistic population projections for all countries. These new methods have been used by the United Nations to produce their most recent population projections for all countries. The results suggest that world population will increase more than had recently been believed likely, reaching between 9 and 13 billion by the end of the century, with no end to population growth this century. The population of Africa, in particular, is likely to grow, from about 1 billion now to between 3 and 5 billion. The number of working age people per retired person will probably decline dramatically in most countries over the coming decades. The results also suggest that the current UN high and low variants underestimate uncertainty for high fertility countries, and overstate uncertainty for low fertility countries, mostly in Europe. Professor Raftery will comment on implications for carbon emissions this century.
