Dear Allstat subscribers,
We are pleased to announce that the next meeting of the RSS Lancashire
and Cumbria local group which will take place on Thursday 30th October
3.30pm – 5pm at Lancaster University (Room A54, Postgraduate Statistics
Centre).
For our seminar, we are pleased to welcome Professor Ian Pewlis from
University of Manchester and Professor Roger Stern from the Statistical
Services Centre, University of Reading. This is a session focussed on
Statistics for International Development.
The seminar will be followed by a wine reception in the Postgraduate
Statistics Centre.
We look forward to seeing you here in Lancaster. There is no need to
register, but if you have any queries please contact Matt Nunes
([log in to unmask]) or Lisa Hampson ([log in to unmask]).
Speaker: Ian Pewlis (University of Manchester)
Title: Indian farmer suicides: is GM cotton to blame?
Abstract:
=========
Survival models such as the Weibull or log-normal lead to inference that
is not robust to the presence of outliers. They also assume that all
heterogeneity between individuals can be modelled through covariates.
This article considers the use of infinite mixtures of lifetime
distributions as a solution for these two issues. This can be
interpreted as the introduction of a random effect in the survival
distribution. We introduce the family of Rate Mixtures of Weibull
distributions, which includes the known Lomax distribution. Bayesian
inference under a prior that combines the structure of the Jeffreys'
prior and a proper (informative) prior is implemented and the existence
of the posterior distribution is verified. In addition, a method for
outlier detection based on the mixture structure is proposed. Finally,
the analysis is illustrated using real datasets.
Ian Plewis is Professor of Social Statistics at the University of
Manchester, having previously worked at the Centre for Longitudinal
Studies in London. His research interests are mostly in the measurement
and explanation of change, especially using longitudinal data.
Speaker: Roger Stern (University of Reading)
Title: Statistics for development
Abstract:
=========
Statistical support is required for a wide range of development and
research projects. Examples from Africa and beyond are described,
particularly focusing on case studies in agriculture and climatology.
Parallel efforts to improve and broaden the training of statisticians in
Africa are also described, to facilitate more effective use of local
resources.
For further details of upcoming events in 2014, please see our website
http://www.rss-lancashire.org.uk/events
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