Statistics

FSRDC 2023 Annual Meeting and Research Conference

October 2, 2023
Renee Starowicz, Ph.D.
by Renee Starowicz. Renee Starowicz, Co-Executive Director of the Berkeley Federal Statistical Research Data Center, provides an overview of the takeaways from the 2023 Annual Federal Statistical Research Data Center Business Meeting and Annual Conference. She provides a brief overview of the Berkeley FSRDC. Then, she describes the priorities for collaboration across national directors to improve outreach to diverse researchers and transparency. Additionally, she points out the other key topics of conversation at this year’s meeting.

Can Machine Learning Models Predict Reality TV Winners? The Case of Survivor

March 14, 2023
Kelly Quinn
by Kelly Quinn. Reality television shows are notorious for tipping the scales to favor certain players they want to see win, but could producers also be spoiling the results in the process? Drawing on data about Survivor, I attempt to predict the likelihood of a contestant making it far into the game based on editing and production decisions, as well as demographic information. This post describes the model used to classify player outcomes and other potential ways to leverage data about reality TV shows for prediction.

Introduction to Field Experiments and Randomized Controlled Trials

July 24, 2023
Leena Bhai
by Leena Bhai. This blog post provides an introduction to field experimentation and its significance in understanding cause and effect. It explains how randomized experiments represent an unbiased method for determining what works. It delves into essential features of experiments such as intervention, excludability, and non-interference. It then works through a fictional example of a randomized controlled trial of the efficacy of an experimental drug Covi-Mapp.

Christopher Paciorek, Ph.D.

Research Computing Consultant, Adjunct Professor
Department of Statistics
Research IT

Chris Paciorek is an adjunct professor in the Department of Statistics, as well as the Statistical Computing Consultant in the Department's Statistical Computing Facility (SCF) and in the Econometrics Laboratory (EML) of the Economics Department. He is also a user support consultant for Berkeley Research Computing. He teaches and presents workshops on statistical computing topics, with a focus on R.

A brief primer on Hidden Markov Models

April 25, 2022
Amy Van Scoyoc

For many data science problems, there is a need to estimate unknown information from a sequence of observed events. You may want to know, for instance, whether a person is angry or happy, given a sequence of brain scans taken while playing a video game. Or you may be digitizing an ancient text, but, due to water damage, can’t tell what one word in the sequence says. Or in my case (I’m a wildlife biologist), you may want to infer whether an animal is sleeping or eating at any given moment using a sequence of animal GPS locations.

Now, there are...

Explaining the 80-20 Rule with the Pareto Distribution

March 15, 2022
Connor Haley

Introduction to Pareto

While not as well-known as the bell-shaped Normal (Gaussian) distribution, the Pareto distribution is a powerful tool for modeling a variety of real-life phenomena. It is named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), who developed the distribution in the 1890s as a way to describe the allocation of wealth in society. He famously observed that 80% of society’s wealth was controlled by 20% of its population, a concept now known as the “Pareto Principle” or the “80-20 Rule”.

The...

Michael Sholinbeck

Public Health Librarian
Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library

Michael has worked at the UC Berkeley Library since 2001, and is currently the Public Health Librarian and Liaison to the School of Optometry at the Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library. Michael coordinates public health instruction at the library, and is responsible for the public health collection. Michael has a MLIS from San Jose State University, an MS in Geography from Oregon State University, and a BA in Geography from UC Berkeley. When not at work he lives out his fantasy of being a rock and roll drummer.

Spooky Microbiomes and the Curse of Dimensionality

October 25, 2021
Sean Perez

Microbiomes are all the rage today and this trendiness is clear with the Human Microbiome Market predicted to be valued at more than 1 billion dollars by the year 2027 (up from 376 million in 2019).

With studies showing that our microbial community is associated with health outcomes, from regulating our brain chemistry and behaviors...

R Bootcamp: Fall 2021

August 21, 2021, 8:30am
The workshop will be an intensive two-day introduction to R using RStudio. After the first morning session, the workshop will (staffing permitting) be split into two separate tracks. Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Statistics Department and the D-Lab.
See event details for participation information.