<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;" class=""><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">From: </b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class="">"Gina M. Holland" <<a href="mailto:gholland@princeton.edu" class="">gholland@Princeton.EDU</a>><br class=""></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;" class=""><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">Subject: </b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class=""><b class="">NEXT PACM Colloquium: Oct 22 - Matthew Salganik, Princeton University</b><br class=""></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;" class=""><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">Date: </b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class="">October 16, 2018 at 3:21:01 PM EDT<br class=""></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;" class=""><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">To: </b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class="">"<a href="mailto:pacmdistribution@math.princeton.edu" class="">pacmdistribution@math.princeton.edu</a>" <<a href="mailto:pacmdistribution@math.princeton.edu" class="">pacmdistribution@math.princeton.edu</a>><br class=""></span></div><br class=""><div class=""><div class="WordSection1" style="page: WordSection1; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">The next PACM Colloquium will be given by Matthew Salganik, Princeton University<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><b class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Title and abstract are below.</span><span style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class=""> </span><span style="font-size: 8pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class=""><br class="">=================<br class="">DATE/LOCATION: Monday, October 22, 2018, 4:00 – 5:00 PM / 214 Fine Hall<br class=""><br class="">SPEAKER: Matthew Salganik, Princeton University<br class=""><br class="">TITLE: </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">The Fragile Families Challenge: A Scientific Mass Collaboration<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">ABSTRACT:</span> <o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div style="border-style: none none double; border-bottom-color: windowtext; border-bottom-width: 2.25pt; padding: 0in 0in 1pt;" class=""><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Sociologists have long theorized about the processes through which childhood experiences shape life outcomes. However, statistical models that use data on family background and childhood experiences to predict life outcomes often have poor predictive performance. These empirical results have lead pioneers of the field muse that random chance must play an important role. In this talk, we present results from the Fragile Families Challenge, a scientific mass collaboration based on the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a birth cohort study of about 5,000 families from large US cities. The study began with a probability sample of newborns, and for more than 15 years, researchers have followed these families to collect information related to child and family development as reported by the child as well as the child’s mother, father, primary caregiver, and teachers. During the Fragile Families Challenge, 159 research teams from 68 institutions in 7 countries used this high-dimensional survey data to produce statistical and machine learning models to predict six life outcomes. Results suggest that (a) modern machine learning methods enabled predictive performance that outpaced approaches more common in social science, but (b) overall predictive performance was poor. The talk will include a discussion of the potential reasons for poor predictive performance in this setting, open methodological questions raised by our results, and the potential for mass collaboration to address other scientific and policy questions.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 8pt;" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></span></div></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><i class=""><span style="font-size: 8pt;" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></span></i></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><i class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(127, 127, 127);" class="">Matthew Salganik is Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, and he is affiliated with several of Princeton's interdisciplinary research centers: the Office for Population Research, the Center for Information Technology Policy, the Center for Health and Wellbeing, and the Center for Statistics and Machine Learning. His research interests include social networks and computational social science. He is the author of <a href="http://www.bitbybitbook.com/" target="_blank" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;" class=""><span style="color: rgb(127, 127, 127);" class="">Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age</span></a>. Salganik's research has been published in journals such as Science, PNAS, Sociological Methodology, and Journal of the American Statistical Association. His papers have won the Outstanding Article Award from the Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association and the Outstanding Statistical Application Award from the American Statistical Association. Popular accounts of his work have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, and New Yorker. Salganik's research is funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Joint United Nations Program for HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Russell Sage Foundation, Sloan Foundation, Facebook, and Google. During sabbaticals from Princeton, he has been a Visiting Professor at Cornell Tech and a Senior Research at Microsoft Research.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></i></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><i class=""><span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125);" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></span></i></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125);" class=""><img class="" apple-inline="yes" id="34125196-7769-4087-A6AB-D53637F2EDC8" height="96" width="96" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:image003.png@01D2B1DD.8A6A3270"></span><o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125);" class=""><img class="" apple-inline="yes" id="10B1C90E-5B7D-413C-92AC-3081F0CB7026" height="48" width="128" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:image004.png@01D2B1DD.8A6A3270"></span></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></body></html>