Advanced Statistics II:  Statistics 36-756


Department of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University

Fall, 2006

Instructor: Stephen E. Fienberg

  • Lectures: TR 10:30-11:50am  BH 232Q (Conference Room) 

  • (We will occasionally meet on Mondays or Wednesdays to make up classes when I need to be away.  See tentative schedule and topics below.)
     



    Syllabus 



    Class Topics  and Readings

    August 29:  Introduction;  Discussion of Bayesian versus frequentist inference

    August 31:  Readings:  Chapter 1 of Schervish, Theory of Statistics, Sections 1.1 and 1.2

    September 5:  Bayesian History paper.  For a copy click here.

    September 6 and 7 (note that we are meeting Wed. this week):  Readings:  Continuation from Chapter 1 of Schervish, Theory of Statistics; Ramsay (1926) [for a copy click here], and  de Finetti (1937) 1983 English translation by Kyburg.

    September 12 and 14:   No Classes


    September 19 and 21:  Continuation of discussion of exchangeability, with readings from de Finetti and Schervisah Chapter 1.  Introduction to Dirichlet processes.

    September 26:  Dirichlet processes and their properties.   Schervish, Section 1.6 and Ferguson (1973, 1974).

    September 27:  (yes, we are meeting on Wednesday too this week):  Schervish, Chapter 2, Sufficiency. Ancilarity, and Exponential families from both frequentist and Bayesian perspectives.  See also Degroot and Fienberg (1983) and Seidenfeld (1985).

    September 28:  Continuation of Chapter 2 Schervish from Wedwesday.  See also, Reid (1995).

    October 3: The Behrens-Fisher Problem (see Welch, (1937)) and the Fieller-Creasy Problems (see  Creasy (1954) and Fieller (1954) and the discussion of their papers following the paper by David, especially the comments of R.A. Fisher.

    October 4 (another Wednesday class): Continuation from Tuesday on the Fieller-Creasy Problem

    October 5:  Objective vs. subjective Bayesian methods.  Begin by reading Section2.3.4 of Schervish on Jeffreys' prior, and look at review of rules for formal priors by Kass and Wasserman (1996).

    Papers by Berger and Goldstein presented at the Bayesian Case Studies Workshop (2005), and published with discussion in Bayesian Analysis (2006).  Go to:  http://ba.stat.cmu.edu/vol01is03.php

     October 10:  Dutch books, Axiomatics, and the Sure-Thing Principle and Simpson's Paradox.
                Schervish, Section 3.3 on axiomatic decision theory.
                Richard Jeffrey, Subjective Probability:  The Real Thing (chapter 1 on Dutch  books).  For a copy click here.
                Colin Blyth (1972) "On Simpson's Paradox and the Sure-Thing Principle,"  JASA, 67, 364-366. For a copy click here.

    October 12:  No regular class.
       Instead, studewnts will be attending a lecture at the universit yof Pittsburgh on Friday Oct. 13 by James Joyce:
        "Rational Belief and Reasonable Belief, a Ramseyian Distinction"
        James Joyce, Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan
        Friday, October 13, 2006, 3:30 pm
        817R Cathedral of Learning
    http://www.pitt.edu/~pittcntr/Events/All/Conferences/others/other_conf_2006-07/bayesianism_fundamentally.htm
       
    October 17:  Graphical Models, Darroch, Lauritzen and Speed (1980).  Markov Random Fields and Log-Linear Models for Contingency Tables.  Annals of Statistics, 8, 522-539.


    October 19:  Graphical Models

    October 24:  HyperMarkov Laws (Dawid and Lauritzen, 1993) and Bayesian model search with graphical models (Madigan and Raftery 1994).

    October 26:   No class.

    October 31: David Huang:  Missing Data, EM and variational inference.
        Rubin (1976)
        Dempster, Laird, and Rubin (1977)


    November 2:  David Huang: Missing Data, EM and variational inference. Continuation from Oct. 31.

    C. F. Jeff Wu   "On the Convergence Properties of the EM Algorithm," The Annals of Statistics, Vol. 11, No. 1. (Mar., 1983), 95-103.

    http://www.jstor.org/view/00905364/di983917/98p04132/0?frame=noframe&dpi=3&userID=80ede88a@cmu.edu/01cc99331300501b10825&config=jstor>
      http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0090-5364%28198303%2911%3A1%3C95%3AOTCPOT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M

    BEAL, M.J. and GHAHRAMANI, Z. (2003). The Variational Bayesian EM Algorithm for Incomplete Data: With   Application to Scoring Graphical Model Structures. Bayesian Statistics 7, 453-463.  To be distributed.

    November 7:  Eric Huang-  Causal Inference

    Judea Pearl "Causal Inference in Statistics: A Gentle Introduction"

    Don Rubin "Direct and Indirect Causal Effects via Potential Outcomes"


    Steffen Lauritzen Discussion on Don Rubin's paper

    Don Rubin "Bayesian Inference for Causal Effects: The Role of Randomization"

    November 9: Eric Huang: Causal Inference (cont.)

    November 14:  Charles Lee:  The Bootstrap

    Brad Efron (1979) Bootstrap Methods:  Another Look ast the Jackknife, Annals of Statistics, 7.

    Rupert Miller (1974)  The Jackknife: A Review. Biometrika, 61.

    Brad Efron (2003) Second Thoughts on the Bootstrap, Statistical Science, 18.

    November 16:  Charles Lee:  The Bootstrap (cont)

    November 21:  no class

    November 23:  Thanksgiving -- no class

    November 28: Cindy Yang:  Elicitation

    Garthwaite_Kadane_review2005.pdf

    Shephard_caseStudy.pdf

    Edwards_Lindman1963.pdf

    November 30: Cindy Yang:  Elicitation (cont.)

    December 5: Dan Heinz:  Dirichlet Prosses

    Teh, Jordan, Beal, Blei. "Hierarchical Dirichlet Processes". 
    Available here:
    http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jordan/publications.html

    Persi Diaconis; David Freedman:On the Consistency of Bayes Estimates, Annals of Statistics, (1986),  vol. 14 pp. 1-26
    Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0090-5364%28198603%2914%3A1%3C1%3AOTCOBE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U
    See also the extended discussion including the that by Bergsr, and by Lindley, and the response as well as the followup paper.
    Discussion: On the Consistency of Bayes Estimates, pp. 30-37
    James Berger
    Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0090-5364%28198603%2914%3A1%3C30%3ADOTCOB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O

    Discussion: On the Consistency of Bayes Estimates, p. 48
    J. A. Hartigan
    Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0090-5364%28198603%2914%3A1%3C48%3ADOTCOB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D

    Discussion: On the Consistency of Bayes Estimates, pp. 55-58
    William S. Krasker; John W. Pratt
    Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0090-5364%28198603%2914%3A1%3C55%3ADOTCOB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D

    Discussion: On the Consistency of Bayes Estimates, pp. 60-63
    Dennis V. Lindley
    Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0090-5364%28198603%2914%3A1%3C60%3ADOTCOB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F

    Rejoinder: On the Consistency of Bayes Estimates, pp. 63-67
    P. Diaconis; D. Freedman
    Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0090-5364%28198603%2914%3A1%3C63%3AROTCOB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z

    On Inconsistent Bayes Estimates of Location, pp. 68-87
                        P. Diaconis; D. Freedman
                        Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0090-5364%28198603%2914%3A1%3C68%3AOIBEOL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X


     December 7:  Dan Heinz  (contnutation from Dec 5)



    Last Updated:  December 4, 2006.