Barry D. Nussbaum, US Environmental Protection Agency
Location:
Friday, October 17, 2008
3:35pm - 4:35pm
321 Riddick Hall, NCSU Campus
Abstract: Statistics and the statistician play an enormous role in the initiation, analysis, and implementation of environmental policy and decisions. Yet, frequently after elaborate analyses, it is "only the facts" that are requested, or only a concise review of the analysis. Using a number of examples, the author describes how frequently it is a relatively simple description of statistical analyses, when presented truly effectively (and often humorously), that can have a large impact on decision making. The author also demonstrates the growing need to review the quality of large acquired data bases. This presentation includes several real examples from relatively simple surveys, analyses, and reviews with applications in regulation development, court cases, and policy making. One of the examples even landed on the desk of the President of the United States.
Professor Deborah Nolan, University of Berkeley
Location:
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
4:00pm - 5:00pm
208 Patterson Hall, NCSU Campus
Abstract: In an effort to share research results and to teach students how statistics is used to answer scientific questions, we are developing an approach that allows authors to create documents that collect all aspects of a data analysis into a "document" so that the computations and results are reproducible, reusable, and amenable to extensions. The aim is for these documents to contain different branches of exploration,the underlying computations used in the analysis, and interactive controls that allow the reader to modify computations. These documents contain various pieces of information (e.g. text, code, data, exploration paths) and can be processed to create regular descriptive papers in various formats (e.g. PDF, HTML), as well as acting as a database of the analysis that can be explored in rich new ways. Similar to Open Source software, we think it is vital that the work of the community of researchers is accessible to the community of educators so that students can experience statistical applications and learn how to approach analyses themselves. Our implementation for this system is based on widely used and standardized frameworks, including XML,XSL, and R. This work is joint with Duncan Temple Lang, UC Davis.
