WA Branch: Displaying Uncertainty and Risk - Dr John Henstridge

Displaying Uncertainty and Risk

Dr John Henstridge
Chief Statistician and Managing Director of Data Analysis Australia

6:00 ᴘᴍ on Tuesday 8^th ­­­­October 2019

CHERYL PRAEGER LECTURE THEATRE
SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS
UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA

ABSTRACT:

Communicating statistical results is never easy as, almost by definition, statistical results are rarely without some qualification. Traditional methods of displaying this uncertainty range from confidence intervals through Bayes ratios to p-values. None of these can be said to be ideal and all are misunderstood by a large proportion of the population (and perhaps practicing statisticians). When working a "data science" environment, these challenges are even greater since the complexity of the data management tends to dwarf traditional statistical issues. In this talk I present some examples of recent work where presenting uncertainty has been a challenge and demonstrate that it actually requires deep statistical thought and judgement.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

John Henstridge is the Chief Statistician and Managing Director of Data Analysis Australia, a statistical consulting firm that he founded in 1988. While his original specialty was time series applied to signal processing problems, as a consultant statistician he has worked across many areas of statistics. He is an Accredited Statistician (of the Statistical Society of Australia) and a Chartered Statistician (of the Royal Statistical Society) and served as the national President of the Statistical Society of Australia between 2013 and 2016.

Members and guests are invited to mingle over wine and cheese from 5:30 ᴘᴍ onwards in the Cheryl Praeger Lecture Theatre. Following the meeting you are invited to dine with the speaker at a nearby restaurant. Visitors are welcome.

The Cheryl Praeger Lecture Theatre is located on the ground floor of the Mathematics building at UWA. The entrance is on the outside of the building and next to the Blakers Lecture Theatre. Note that UWA maps this is named as Maths Lecture Room 1. Map links: Google Maps (note this links to Blakers, next door to Cheryl Praeger LT), Open Street Maps (Mathematics building).

Parking is free on the UWA campus after 5:00 ᴘᴍ.

For further information please contact the Branch Secretary, Rick Tankard, Murdoch University.
He can be reached by email at rick.tankard@murdoch.edu.au or by phone at (08) 9360 2820.