Free Public Lecture Featured at Statistics Workshop on 26 April

31 March 2003 -- A free public lecture titled "Bayes and the Bootstrap" will be presented by Bradley Efron, the Max H. Stein Professor in the Department of Statistics at Stanford University, at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, 26 April 2003, in 201 Thomas Building on the Penn State University Park campus. The lecture is part of a two-day workshop titled "Current Trends in Bayseian Methods," which is organized by the Penn State Department of Statistics and Center for Multivariate Analysis. Immediately before his lecture, Efron will be presented with the C. R. and Bhargavi Rao Prize by Daniel J. Larson, dean of the Penn State Eberly College of Science.

Efron, whose research involves both theoretical and applied statistics, is known for his work on statistical problems in biological and astrophysical systems. Considered one of the most innovative and original contributors to statistical science today, Efron's key ideas, especially concerning statistical curvature and the powerful and widely used bootstrap method, which he developed, have had a wide impact on the theory and practice of statistics during the past four decades and have given rise to entire schools of statistical research.

Among the numerous honors that Efron has received are Fellowships of the American Academy of Arts and Science, the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Stanford University, the Royal Statistical Society, the International Statistical Institute, and the MacArthur Fellows Program of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He is a member of the U. S. National Academy of Science, a recipient of the Ford Prize of the Mathematical Association of America, and the Wilks Medal of the American Statistical Association.

The "Current Trends in Bayseian Methods" workshop, which begins on Friday, 25 April 2003, includes ten lectures by leading experts in Bayesian statistical analysis, an area of statistics that is used, for example, by corporations and industrial organizations in making optimal decisions, in medical diagnosis, and in business forecasting. For more information or to register to attend other events in the workshop, contact Thomas Hettmansperger at tph@stat.psu.edu or C. R. Rao at crr1@psu.edu.

[ B K K ]