Dr. Nicholas Horton, ScD ’99, will be this year’s recipient of the annual Lagakos Distinguished Alumni Award.
Dr. Horton graduated from the Department in 1999 and is currently a Professor of Statistics at Amherst College. He has been widely impactful in both leadership and service to the profession and has distinguished himself through his contributions to statistical methodology and computing, and his commitment to teaching and statistical education.
Thursday, October 19, 2017
FXB Building, Room G12
Award & Lecture: 3:30-4:30pm
Coffee & Tea served at 3:00pm
Reception to follow at 4:30pm in the FXB Atrium
Please contact Shaina Andelman to schedule a meeting with Dr. Horton.
Dr. Horton will speak on:
Multivariate thinking and the introductory biostatistics course: preparing students to make sense of a world of observational data
We live in a world of ever expanding found (or what we might call observational) data. To make decisions and disentangle complex relationships in such a world, students need a background in design and confounding. The GAISE College Report enunicated the importance of multivariate thinking as a way to move beyond bivariate thinking. But how do such learning outcomes compete with other aspects of statistics knowledge (e.g., inference and p-values) in introductory courses that are already overfull. In this talk I will offer some reflections and guidance about how we might move forward, with specific implications for introductory biostatistics courses.
