SMS scnews item created by Munir Hiabu at Mon 15 Jul 2019 2307
Type: Seminar
Distribution: World
Expiry: 22 Jul 2019
Calendar1: 19 Jul 2019 1400-1500
CalLoc1: Carslaw 373
CalTitle1: Placating pugilistic pachyderms: proper priors prevent poor performance
Auth: munir@213.205.198.15 (mhia8050) in SMS-SAML

Statistics Seminar

Placating pugilistic pachyderms: proper priors prevent poor performance

Daniel Simpson

Friday July 19, 2pm, Carslaw 373

Dan Simpson ( University of Toronto, Department of Statistical Sciences)

Title: Placating pugilistic pachyderms: proper priors prevent poor performance

Modern statistical inference finds itself caught between two charging elephants: an elephant named model complexity and the elephant who answers only to "expressivity". Within the Bayesian framework, prior distributions are a way to try to balance these angry pachyderms. In this talk, I will cover a bunch of methods for specifying and evaluating prior distributions for complex statistical models.