THE CAMBRIDGE STATISTICS DISCUSSION GROUP
Thursday 7th March 2002 7:15 for 7:45
Darwin College,
Cambridge
Multilevel modelling of racecourse fatalities:
the younger the safer".
James Wood,
Animal Health Trust,
Newmarket
Abstract:
Serious injury to racehorses is of considerable concern to racing and animal
welfarists. Greater understanding of the likely causes of these injuries is
a necessary step in reducing them. We have been using data on all British
races from 1990 to 2000 (c750,000 starts), determining factors
associated with risk of fatal injury, and evaluating the usefulness of
predictive modelling. Although we have used a horse race start as our basic
unit of observation, race starts are clustered within races, which are
clustered within race days and racecourses and horses are clustered within
training yards.
Multilevel models have improved our risk estimates and our understanding of
where sources of residual variation reside. A very applied talk!
Speaker:
James Wood is a vet who has specialised in epidemiology. His initial
training in epidemiology was from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine. He is now head of epidemiology at the Animal Health Trust (AHT)
near Newmarket, where the unit consists of a multidisciplinary team of vets,
epidemiologists, statisticians and mathematicians (in no particular order).
Work in the unit, which relies on collaborations, covers infectious diseases
and musculoskeletal injuries in horses and cancer and inherited diseases in
dogs. Prior to the AHT, he worked in veterinary practice, briefly on scrapie
at MAFF's Central Veterinary Laboratory and also ran a lamb production trial
in East Anglia.
Directions: Darwin College is situated on the right of Silver Street just
after the crossroads with Queen's Road as you approach the city. Free
parking is available opposite the college and in Queen's Road.
Provisional Next Meetings:
4th April - Toby Prevost (CAMS) on 'Statistical involvement in General
Practice cluster randomised trials'.
9th May - Kris Kelly (Amgen) on 'Eleven years of statistics and statistical
issues in the pharmaceutical industry'.
Supper: Some members eat regularly in the University Centre before
each talk meeting in the downstairs bar at 6pm. Feel free to join them.
Subscriptions: of 4 pounds per member are now due for the 2001-2002 session.
Cheques should be made payable to Peter Watson and may be posted
to the secretary at the address below.
Secretary: Peter Watson, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit,
15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge CB2 2EF;telephone 01223 355294 Extension 722;
E-mail [log in to unmask]
|