This year at the 40th Annual Summer Institute of Applied Statistics, professors, professionals, and graduate students will have the opportunity to add to their statistical knowledge and skills.
The Summer Institute is hosted by the Department of Statistics and will be held from June 17 to June 19 in room 120 of the Tanner Building. This year’s presenter is Dr. Sudipto Banerjee from UCLA.
Banerjee received his bachelors and masters of statistics in India, and his doctorate in Connecticut. His research includes statistical modeling and analysis of geographically referenced datasets, Bayesian statistics and hierarchical modelling, and statistical computing and related software development. Banerjee has received various honors and awards through his career.
The seminar will provide an introduction to hierarchical modeling and related statistical methods for analyzing spatially correlated data. Banerjee will begin by outlining and providing illustrative examples of the three types of spatial data: point-level (geostatistical), areal (lattice), and spatial point patterns.
Banerjee will describe exploratory data analysis tools followed by traditional modeling approaches for point-referenced data. Subsequently, the statistics department will introduce fully model-based approaches emphasizing upon Bayesian inference and computing. The department will include hierarchical modeling for both univariate and multivariate spatial response data, a discussion of spatial point process models, and spatial modeling for large data sets (the “big N problem”). Examples from environmental sciences and public health will be illustrated using R packages such as spBayes and the OpenBUGS software.
The Summer Institute originated in 1976, after BYU statistics professor Gale Bryce and Dennis Tolley met in Durham, N.C., where they discussed the advantages of sharing research projects with peers. Since then, the statistics department has hosted Summer Institute annually.
Over the past 40 years, well-known statisticians from around the globe have presented at the Summer Institute. In the last few years, the Summer Institute has focused on expertise from faculty in the statistics department who have presented to various groups of professors, students, and professionals.
Participants need to register online before June 5, 2015. Check-ins begin on June 17 at 8:30 a.m. just outside of room 120 in the Tanner Building. The workshops will continue through June 19. Refreshments are provided, along with a dinner at Magleby’s Resturant in Springville on Thursday, June 18. A closing luncheon will be held in the Gordon B. Hinckley Alumni and Visitors Center. Check the schedule online at stastistics.byu.edu for more information.