Calendar

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS AND BIOSTATISTICS www.stat.rutgers.edu

Seminar θSpeaker:     Professor Deborah Mayo, Virginia Tech

Title:           Probing with Severity: Beyond Bayesian Probabilism and Frequentist Performance

Time:          3:20 – 4:20pm, Wednesday, December 3, 2014 Place:         552 Hill Center

ABSTRACT

Probing with Severity: Beyond Bayesian Probabilism and Frequentist Performance Getting beyond today’s most pressing controversies revolving around statistical methods, I argue, requires scrutinizing their underlying statistical philosophies.Two main philosophies about the roles of probability in statistical inference are probabilism and performance (in the long-run). The first assumes that we need a method of assigning probabilities to hypotheses; the second assumes that the main function of statistical method is to control long-run performance. I offer a third goal: controlling and evaluating the probativeness of methods. An inductive inference, in this conception, takes the form of inferring hypotheses to the extent that they have been well or severely tested. A report of poorly tested claims must also be part of an adequate inference. I develop a statistical philosophy in which error probabilities of methods may be used to evaluate and control the stringency or severity of tests. I then show how the “severe testing” philosophy clarifies and avoids familiar criticisms and abuses of significance tests and cognate methods (e.g., confidence intervals). Severity may be threatened in three main ways: fallacies of statistical tests, unwarranted links between statistical and substantive claims, and violations of model assumptions.

Please join us in conversation with Philip Kitcher as we discuss themes from his new book, Life after Faith.  While atheist writers gleefully cataloguing religion’s intellectual and moral vices have been numerous of late, too few have treated their target with the respect it deserves for successfully providing emotional comfort and social cohesion. Kitcher changes that, acknowledging religion’s virtues even as he constructs a secular humanist alternative to replace it.

Talk with him about this on Monday, February 23, 2015 at 7:00pm at Book Culture, 536 West 112th St., NY, NY  (212) 865-1588

The Philosophy of Statistics: Bayesianism, Frequentism and the Nature of Inference,
2015 APS Annual Convention
Saturday, May 23 2:00 PM- 3:50 PM in Wilder
(Marriott Marquis 1535 B’way)

Presenters:

Andrew Gelman, Professor of Statistics & Political Science, Columbia University

Stephen Senn, Head of Competence Center for Methodology and Statistics (CCMS) Luxembourg Institute of Health

D.G. Mayo, Professor of Philosophy, Virginia Tech

Richard Morey, Session Chair & Discussant, Senior Lecturer School of Psychology, Cardiff University

Please join us on Tuesday, October 20th at 6pm, at The Cornelia Street Café, as we welcome world-renowned philosopher and logician Graham Priest, as he discusses the surprising connections among Buddhist and Marxist critiques of the very conditions that not only support our capitalist society but contribute significantly to the sort of suffering with which we have become all too familiar.

Priest, perhaps most well-known for his robust defense of the view that there are true contradictions, has long found fruitful ways of bringing his knowledge of Asian thought and practice to bear on questions that have defined philosophy’s European tradition. This collaboration of understanding continues in this talk.

The Cornelia Street Café is located at 29 Cornelia Street, New York, NY 10014 (near Sixth Avenue and West 4th St.). Admission is $9, which includes the price of one drink. Reservations are recommended (212. 989.9319).

Metro Area Philosophy of Science Presents:

Elizabeth Miller (Yale),

Title: TBA.

Jonathan Bain (NYU)

What Explains the Spin-Statistics Connection?

The spin-statistics connection plays an essential role in explanations of non-relativistic phenomena associated with both field-theoretic and non-field-theoretic systems (for instance, it explains the electronic structure of solids and the behavior of Einstein-Bose condensates and superconductors). However, it is only derivable within the context of relativistic quantum field theory (RQFT) in the form of the Spin-Statistics Theorem; and moreover, there are multiple, mutually incompatible ways of deriving it. This essay attempts to determine the sense in which the spin-statistics connection can be said to be an essential property in RQFT, and how it is that an essential property of one type of theory can figure into fundamental explanations offered by other, inherently distinct theories.

What do the worlds of global finance and nationalist populism have in common? How can we understand the rise of today’s ‘new fascisms’ through the prism of financialization? This one-day workshop brings together scholars from across disciplines to debate  these key questions for our understanding of contemporary capitalism. The workshop is part of Public Seminar’s Imaginal Politics initiative and is organised jointly with the Department of Social Science, University College London. The workshop will include three panel discussions and will close with a talk by Judith Butler on ‘Anti-gender ideology and the new fascism’.