Speaker: Alan E. Gelfand, James B Duke Professor, Department of Statistical Science,Duke University
 

Title: Space is the Place:Why spatial thinking matters for environmental problems

Date:2015.4.28（Tuesday）3:00-4:00PM

Place:数学楼二楼学术报告厅

Abstract： Spatial methods have become an increasingly used approach for analyzing data in many fields. In particular, it is now routine to collect data layers where there is some geographic referencing.  This information should be used in order to enhance inference.  From a statis- tical perspective, we think in terms of formal inference, utilizing probabilistic or stochastic modeling; we think beyond purely descriptive summaries. In this sense, we exceed the capa- bilities of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software to investigate complex processes over space and time.
A particularly rich context for such investigation is environmental  processes. Examples include analysis of weather/climate data, analysis of environmental  exposure data, analysis of locations of disease occurrence,  and analysis of distributions of species over a region. In this non-technical talk, I will describe the types of spatial (and, perhaps, spatio-temporal) data that we collect.  I will discuss what we expect to see  with regard to these types  of data, i.e., what we mean by “spatial pattern.”  I will raise a variety of issues that arise in modeling such data - explanation of local behavior through spatially referenced explanatory variables, explanation of uncertainty through structured dependence. I will illustrate, with a variety of datasets involving the foregoing  processes, hopefully to illuminate that statistical thinking does matter when we have inferential objectives such as explanation,  interpolation, and prediction.


 

报告人简介：Alan E. Gelfand是美国杜克大学统计系James B杜克教授，Gelfand教授是美国统计协会当选会士，数理统计学院当选会士，国际统计学院当选会士,美国康涅狄格州艺术与科学院院士，是1991-2001年间第10名被引用最多的数学家，他迄今发表了270余篇论文，主要在应用统计，贝叶斯计算，贝叶斯推断领域有重要国际性影响。曾任国际贝叶斯分析学会主席，于2006年因对统计学研究的长期贡献获得Parzen奖。

详见个人网页：//stat.duke.edu/~alan/

About the speaker: Alan E. Gelfand is The James B Duke Professor of Statistical Science, Duke University. Professor Gelfand is an Elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute, and Elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. Author of more than 270 papers, Gelfand is internationally known for his contributions to applied statistics, Bayesian computation and Bayesian inference. (An article in Science Watch found him to be the tenth most cited mathematical scientist in the world over the period 1991-2001). He is a former President of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis and in 2006, he received the Parzen Prize for a lifetime of research contribution to Statistics.

//stat.duke.edu/~alan/