Insight Statistical Consulting are running their next R training course on the following dates in September:
Academic Rate (Full Time Lecturers and Students) is €300 Each Day, with Business Rate €400 Each Day. Full Details can be found here:
http://insightsc.ie/company-news/1037/
Washington D.C., 15th March 2017 – An Taoiseach Enda Kenny TD, has today presented Science Foundation Ireland’s (SFI) prestigious ‘St. Patrick’s Day Science Medal’ to Dr T. Pearse Lyons, founder and president of Alltech, and Prof Adrian E. Raftery, Professor of Statistics and Sociology at the University of Washington, for their significant contribution to academia and industry.
Now in its fourth year, the SFI St. Patrick’s Day Science Medal recognises the outstanding contributions of Dr T. Pearse Lyons and Prof Adrian Raftery in their respective fields, as well as their role in developing the research ecosystem in Ireland. The Medal is awarded annually to a distinguished Irish scientist, engineer or technology leader living and working in the USA.
Dublin-born Prof Adrian E. Raftery has been described by his peers as one of the most eminent statisticians in the world. His work has resulted in the development of new statistical methods, focusing particularly on the social, environmental and health sciences. Prof Raftery’s work to quantify statistical uncertainty in demographic projections has fundamentally changed approaches to population forecasting. This was demonstrated by the United Nations recently publishing a recalculation of world population projections, which directly incorporated Prof Raftery’s work.
The Irish Statistical Association is a member of the Federation of European National Statistical Societies FENStatS members and has a representative on the board of European Courses in Advanced Statistics ECAS
ECAS courses are intended to achieve postgraduate training in special areas of statistics for both researchers and teachers at universities, as well as professionals working in industry and interested in the application of new statistical methods.
Below are some upcoming ECAS courses.
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 37th Conference on Applied Statistics in Ireland will take place in Bloomfield House Hotel, Mullingar from May 15-17. Registration is now open as is abstract submission at www.casi.ie.
The conference is being organized this year by the Statistics group of the School of Mathematics and Statistics UCD.
Please submit your abstracts as soon as possible. On behalf of the organising committee I extend a warm welcome to all potentail participants.
CASI 2017 Organizing Committee: Andrew Parnell, Claire Gormley, Kate O’Hanlon, Brendan Murphy, Nial Friel, Adrian O’Hagan, Damien McParland, Patrick Murphy, Vasiliki Dimitrakopoulou, Michelle Carey, Michael Salter-Townshend, Gabrielle Kelly.
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.