Bill Press of "Numerical Recipes in C" speaking at PICASso today. From: picasso-bounces@lists.cs.princeton.edu [mailto:picasso-bounces@lists.cs.princeton.edu] On Behalf Of Cecile Huttenhower Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 9:12 AM To: picasso-faculty@lists.cs.princeton.edu; picasso@lists.cs.princeton.edu Subject: [PICASso] TODAY - What Is a Statistical Model and When Do I Need One? ** PICASso: ** Program in Integrative Information, Computer and Application Sciences ** www.cs.princeton.edu/picasso ** ** TALK TODAY -- Monday, November 24, 2008 Interdisciplinary Computational Seminars http://www.cs.princeton.edu/picasso/computational_lunch.php TITLE: What Is a Statistical Model and When Do I Need One? SPEAKER: Bill Press, CS, U. Texas TIME: Monday, November 24, 2008 Seminar begins at 12:30 p.m. (lunch provided ~12:20) LOCATION: Room 104, Computer Science, Princeton University ABSTRACT: Whether by differential equations (ODEs or PDEs) or algebraic systems of equations, computational science traffics mainly in deterministic models of physical systems. While we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that the model "is" the physical system, it is always only an abstract, and approximate, representation. Statistical models are a different kind of abstraction, not for the deterministic part of a system, but for how it interacts with physical stochasticity and/or with Bayesian priors expressing imperfect knowledge. This talk compares statistical and deterministic models, using examples drawn from cosmology and bioinformatics. SIGN UP FOR THE PICASSO MAILING LIST: ===================================== If you would like to be kept informed of computationally-oriented events in (and around) Princeton, please SUBSCRIBE to the PICASso mailing list by visiting https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/picasso. This page also contains information on how to UNSUBSCRIBE. PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO OTHER COMPUTATIONALLY-ORIENTED RESEARCHERS WHO MAY BE INTERESTED IN THIS EVENT, OR FUTURE PROGRAMS. THANKS!