Subject: The 16th Annual Charles R. DePrima Memorial Undergraduate Mathematics Lecture

From: "Aubry, Kristy B." <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:49:55 -0800

The 16th Annual Charles R. DePrima Memorial
Undergraduate Mathematics Lecture
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
4:15 p.m.  201 Bridge

Bradley Efron
Stanford University
http://math.caltech.edu/events/07deprima.html

BASEBALL, SHAKESPEARE, AND MODERN STATISTICAL THEORY

Abstract: Statistics is the mathematical theory of learning from
experience, especially experience that arrives a little bit at a time: a
baseball player's success or failure in one trip to the plate, a cancer
patient's survival or death in a clinical trial of a new treatment. Two
competing schools, the Bayesians and the frequentists, have contended
for supremacy in information collection for two and a half centuries.
Suddenly, at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century, new scientific
technology, producing torrents of data asking volumes of questions, has
forced a combined Bayesian/frequentist approach to information analysis.
I'll describe both the old and new theories through a few examples. No
background beyond elementary probability will be assumed.

Bradley Efron is Professor of Statistics and Biostatistics at Stanford
University. He works on a combination of theoretical and applied topics,
including empirical Bayes methods, survival analysis, exponential
families, the bootstrap and jackknife methods, and confidence intervals.
His invention of the bootstrap in 1977 has had a huge impact on the
theory and practice of statistics.  In recent years he has worked with
scientists in many fields to clarify important questions that involve
statistics.

Brad was a Caltech math major and president of Ricketts House,
graduating in 1960. For his Ph.D. in statistics he went to Stanford,
which has been his academic home ever since.  At Stanford he has been
chair of the Statistics Department, Associate Dean of Science, and chair
of the Faculty Senate. He is a past president of the American
Statistical Association, a MacArthur Prize winner, and a member of the
National Academy of Sciences.

The Charles R. DePrima Memorial Undergraduate Mathematics Lecture was
established by a gift from Charles R. DePrima and Margaret Thurmond
DePrima. The Institute is privileged to honor the memory of Professor
DePrima and his distinguished contribution to mathematics and Caltech,
where he served as a faculty member for over forty years, with a lecture
each year by an outstanding mathematician. Professor DePrima perceived
that there were few or no special talks or seminars designed for
undergraduates; he and Margaret DePrima intended that this lecture
series would fill that need.

****************************

Kristy Aubry

Graduate Option Representative

Caltech Mathematics Department

1200 E. California Boulevard

MC 253-37

Pasadena, CA 91125

626.395.4087 Office