2024 Myles Hollander Distinguished Lecture (FSU)

FSU Announces Robert E. Kass as 2024 Myles Hollander Distinguished Lecturer 

The Department of Statistics at Florida State University is pleased to announce that Robert E. Kass, the Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics and Computational Neuroscience in the Department of Statistics and Data Science, the Machine Learning Department and the Neuroscience Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, is the 2024 Myles Hollander Distinguished Lecturer.

Kass will present “Reasoning from Data in Science,” at 11 a.m., Friday, Oct. 4, 2024, on FSU’s Tallahassee campus. The live talk will also be accessible via Zoom. For more information and to register for the virtual talk, visit stat.fsu.edu/HollanderLecture. 

Lecture Abstract

In statistical research and teaching, we rightly focus on technical methods but, in my view, especially in teaching, the underlying attitudes and principles are often given too little attention. I will use examples drawn from neuroscience to illustrate three general themes that help explain many great advances in reasoning from data: rigor, faith and pragmatism.

This high-level, conceptual lecture will avoid details and anyone who may want more, or may want to read ahead, should visit stat.cmu.edu/~kass/ to review the relevant publications. Parts of my perspective were articulated in my 2011 article, “Statistical Inference: The Big Picture” and my 2021 commentary, “The Two Cultures: Statistics and Machine Learning in Science.” The data I will discuss are neural spike trains and local field potentials recorded from electrodes within the brain. The context may be found in a 2018 article I wrote with 24 others for the Annual Reviews. The methods are summarized (without math, aiming at experimentalists) in a 2023 review I wrote with four of my graduate trainees for the Journal of Neurophysiology.

About the Speaker

Robert E. Kass received a B.A. in mathematics from Antioch College (1975), a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Chicago (1980) and was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University before joining Carnegie Mellon University in 1981. His early work formed the basis for his co-authored book “Geometrical Foundations of Asymptotic Inference,” and his subsequent research has sought to understand how reasoning from data produces reliable scientific knowledge. For Bayesian inference, Kass and colleagues provided comprehensive reassessment of the evaluation of evidence concerning hypotheses and determination of prior probabilities. Kass is a leader in the application of statistics to neuroscience, where he has focused on tractable data-analytic statistical models for spike trains, i.e., data representing the primary mode of communication among neurons, and co-authored the book “Analysis of Neural Data.”

Kass served as chair of the Statistics Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, founding editor-in-chief of the journal Bayesian Analysis, and executive editor of the international review journal Statistical Science. He received the Outstanding Statistical Application Award from the American Statistical Association and the Distinguished Achievement Award and Lectureship from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies. Kass is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.

About the Lectureship

The Myles Hollander Distinguished Lectureship was established by Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor and statistics professor emeritus at Florida State University Myles Hollander, in appreciation of the university, its statistics department, and the statistics profession. The annual lectureship recognizes an internationally renowned leader and pioneering researcher in statistics who has made a sustained impact on the field, and the lectures will feature topics spanning the breadth of statistics.

About Myles Hollander

Professor Emeritus Myles Hollander joined the FSU Department of Statistics in 1965 upon completion of his M.S. and Ph.D. in statistics at Stanford University after earning his B.S. in mathematics from Carnegie Institute of Technology. He made substantial and enduring research contributions to nonparametric statistics, reliability theory, survival analysis, biostatistics and probability theory, among other areas. Hollander co-authored textbooks on nonparametric statistics, biostatistics, and introductory statistics.

Hollander is Fellow of the American Statistical Association, Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute. He served as editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Theory and Methods (1994-1996) after being editor-elect (1993-1994). In 2003, the American Statistical Association recognized him with the Gottfried E. Noether Senior Scholar Award for his excellence in theory, methodology, and applications in nonparametric statistics.

At FSU, Hollander served as statistics chair for nine years (1978-1981, 1999-2005). He received the Professorial Excellence Award in 1977, was named Distinguished Research Professor in 1996, and in 1998 was named Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor, the highest honor Florida State faculty bestow upon one of their own. He retired in 2007 after 42 years of service.

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