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Case Studies in Bayesian Statistics VII

February 24, 2003, 12:00AM

SEVENTH WORKSHOP ON CASE STUDIES IN BAYESIAN STATISTICS

September 12-13, 2003
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

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* ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR ABSTRACTS *
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The Seventh Workshop on Case Studies of Bayesian Statistics will take
place on September 12th and 13th 2003 at Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA. The Workshop will feature in-depth presentations and
discussions of substantial applications of Bayesian statistics to
problems in science and technology, and poster presentations of
contributed papers on applied Bayesian work. In conjunction with the
workshop, the Department of Statistics' Seventh Morris H DeGroot
memorial lecture will be delivered by Stephen Stigler.

*** ABSTRACTS DUE JANUARY 20 ***

We are calling for proposals in the form of detailed abstracts (about
2 pages) from those interested in presenting one of the main invited
papers for discussion. To be considered for a presentation...

Wasserman Awarded Statistical Society of Canada Prize

February 20, 2003, 12:00AM

Larry Wasserman, professor of statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, has been awarded the 2002 Centre de recherches mathematiques de Montreal - Statistical Society of Canada (CRM-SSC) prize for his original contributions to statistical theory and his development of Bayesian methodology.

The CRM and SSC jointly sponsor this prestigious award. It is given annually to a Canadian statistician in recognition of outstanding contributions to the discipline in the recipient's first 15 years after earning a doctorate. Wasserman, born and raised in Windsor, Ontario, is the fourth recipient of the prize. Wasserman has authored or co-authored more than 60 scientific articles. He is considered a leader for his perspective on and knowledge of the foundations of statistics. His expertise and influence have influenced modern statistical theory, such as sampling, mixture models, multiple testing, goodness-of-fit, and robustness issues. He also collaborates with astrophysicists and statistical geneticists.

Wasserman's contributions to statistical theory and his work as a pioneer in Bayesian inference have won him many distinctions over the past two decades in the United States...

Asher's Analysis Contributes Information to War Crimes Trial

February 18, 2003, 12:00AM

The field of statistics isn't usually thought of as helping to bring down dictators, but the work of Jana Asher, a doctoral student in Statistics, may have done just that. Asher, along with Patrick Ball, a statistician with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and researchers from the University of Chicago and ABA/CEELI (the American Bar Association's Central and East European Law Initiative), helped to analyze data from Kosovo from the Spring of 1999, as part of the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the former leader of Yugoslavia.

The goal of the researchers was to examine the hypotheses of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia concerning mass migrations of ethnic Albanians during the months of March to June. The three hypotheses of the tribunal dealt with NATO bombings, actions of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and a systematic attempt by the government to purge the country of ethnic Albanians. Ball's team had to see if their data was consistent with or contradictory to any of these hypotheses.

Using a technique called Multiple Systems Estimation, Ball's team discovered that the data that they had was...