Abstract:
Familiar statistical estimates such as batting averages, political polls, and medical trial results are obtained by direct observation of cases of interest. Sometimes, though, we can learn from the experience of "others": for instance there may be information about Player A's batting ability in the observed averages of Players B, C, and D. In his presentation, Professor Efron will present several examples showing how this works in practice, indicating some of the surprising theoretical ideas involved. The talk is mainly descriptive in nature, and is intended for a general scientific audience.

About Dr. Efron:
Bradley Efron is the Max H. Stein Professor of Statistics and Biostatistics at Stanford University's School of Humanities and Sciences and the Department of Health Research and Policy with the School of Medicine. He completed his undergraduate work in mathematics at the California Institute of Technology, and earned his doctorate in statistics from Stanford in 1964, joining the Stanford faculty that same year. He was Associate Dean for the School of Humanities and Sciences from 1987 to 1990, served a term as Chair of the Faculty Senate as well as three terms as Chair of the Department of Statistics, and continues as Chairman of the Mathematical and Computational Sciences Program. He has served as president of the American Statistical Association and of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He is a past editor of the  Journal of the American Statistical Association and is presently the founding editor of the  Annals of Applied Statistics.

Among the numerous honors that Efron has received are Fellowships of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the Royal Statistical Society, the International Statistical Institute and the MacArthur Fellows Program of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of the Ford Prize of the Mathematical Association of America and of both the Wilks Medal and the Noether Prize of the American Statistical Association. Efron was awarded the 1998 Parzen Prize for Statistical Innovation by Texas A&M University, and the first-ever Rao Prize for outstanding research in statistics by Pennsylvania State University in 2003. He received the 2005 National Medal of Science "for his contributions to theoretical and applied statistics, especially the bootstrap sampling technique; for his extraordinary geometric insight into nonlinear statistical problems; and for applications in medicine, physics and astronomy."