The B&B Department hosted Andrew Gelman, Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University as its sixth annual Distinguished Speaker.
Dr. Gelman gave two widely attended lectures, the first of which was “The Statistical Crisis in Science,” where he inserted humor into a discussion of the misuse of the p-value as a gatekeeper to publication. His second lecture, ‘Taking Bayesian Inference Seriously,” discussed the role of informative priors, especially in ruling out unlikely results. Both talks highlighted how existing paradigms in statistical design and analysis have made the publishing of scientifically implausible claims worse and how better methods could improve the situation.
Dr. Gelman has published on provocative topics such as: why it is rational to vote; why campaign polls are so variable when elections are so predictable; why redistricting is good for democracy; reversals of death sentences; police stops in New York City, the statistical challenges of estimating small effects; the probability that your vote will be decisive; seats and votes in Congress; social network structure; arsenic in Bangladesh; radon in your basement.
Each year the Biostatics and Bioinformatics Department invites a Distinguished Speaker to meet with faculty, researchers and students and to offer two addresses to the Duke community.