May 1-3, 2017
Hilles Event Hall, 59 Shepard St. MA
The Department of Statistics is pleased to announce the 4th Bayesian, Fiducial and Frequentist Workshop (BFF4), to be held on May 1-3, 2017 at Harvard University. The BFF workshop series celebrates foundational thinking in statistics and inference under uncertainty. The three-day event will present talks, discussions and panels that feature statisticians and philosophers whose research interests synergize at the interface of their respective disciplines. Confirmed featured speakers include Sir David Cox and Stephen Stigler.
Featured Speakers and Discussants: Arthur Dempster (Harvard); Cynthia Dwork (Harvard); Andrew Gelman (Columbia); Ned Hall (Harvard); Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech); Nancy Reid (Toronto); Susanna Rinard (Harvard); Christian Robert (Paris-Dauphine/Warwick); Teddy Seidenfeld (CMU); Glenn Shafer (Rutgers); Stephen Senn (LIH); Stephen Stigler (Chicago); Sandy Zabell (Northwestern)
Invited Speakers and Panelists: Jim Berger (Duke); Emery Brown (MIT/MGH); Larry Brown (Wharton); David Cox (Oxford; remote participation); Paul Edlefsen (Hutch); Don Fraser (Toronto); Ruobin Gong (Harvard); Jan Hannig (UNC); Alfred Hero (Michigan); Nils Hjort (Oslo); Pierre Jacob (Harvard); Keli Liu (Stanford); Regina Liu (Rutgers); Antonietta Mira (USI); Ryan Martin (NC State); Vijay Nair (Michigan); James Robins (Harvard); Daniel Roy (Toronto); Donald B. Rubin (Harvard); Peter XK Song (Michigan); Gunnar Taraldsen (NUST); Tyler VanderWeele (HSPH); Vladimir Vovk (London); Nanny Wermuth (Chalmers/Gutenberg); Min-ge Xie (Rutgers)
For questions, please email bff4info@gmail.com
Program
Visit the links for the conference schedule by day, or view the whole schedule below.
May 1
May 2
May 3
Registration is required–please click here to register!
Early bird rates available through Tuesday, April 18th at 4:00 pm.
Harvard ID holders can attend daytime events for free, but they must register and pay the registration fee to attend the banquet.
Attendee parking is available at your own expense. Please contact Madeleine, mstraubel@fas.harvard.edu, for the link and the code.
Monday, May 1
8:00 am – 8:45 am Registration
8:45 am – 9:00 am Opening Remarks, Xiao-Li Meng, Harvard University
9:00 am – 10:15 am Featured Discussion: What Bayes did, and (more to my point) what Bayes did not do
Speaker: Arthur Dempster, Harvard University
Discussant: Glenn Shafer, Rutgers University
10:15 am – 10:30 am Coffee Break
10:30 am – 12:00 noon Invited Session
Ryan Martin, North Carolina State University, “Confidence, probability, and plausibility”
Jan Hannig, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, “Generalized Fiducial Inference: Current Challenges”
Nanny Wermuth, Chalmers University, “Characterising model classes by prime graphs and by statistical properties”
12:00 noon – 1:30 pm Poster Session with Lunch
1:30 pm – 2:45 pm Featured Discussion: Using rates of incoherence to refresh some old “foundational” debates
Speaker: Teddy Seidenfeld, Carnegie Mellon University
Discussant: Christian Robert, University of Warwick/Paris-Dauphine
2:45 pm – 3:00 pm Coffee Break
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm Invited Session
Alfred Hero, University of Michigan, “Continuum limits of shortest paths”
Daniel Roy, University of Toronto, “On Extended Admissible Procedures and their Nonstandard Bayes Risk”
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm Panel: Views from the Rising Stars
Panelists: Ruobin Gong, Harvard University; Jan Hannig, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; Keli Liu, Stanford University; Ryan Martin, North Carolina State; Tyler VanderWeele, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
Moderator: Pierre Jacob, Harvard University
7:00 pm Evening Banquet
Speaker: Stephen Stigler, University of Chicago
Tuesday, May 2
9:00 am – 10:15 am Featured Discussion: The Secret Life of I.J. Good
Speaker: Sandy Zabell, Northwestern University
Discussant: Cynthia Dwork, Harvard University
10:15 am – 10:30 am Coffee Break
10:30 am – 12:00 noon Invited Session
Vladimir Vovk, University of London, “Nonparametric predictive distributions”
Don Fraser, University of Toronto, “Distributions for theta: Validity and Risks”
Antonietta Mira, Universita della Svizzera Italiana, “Deriving Bayesian and frequentist estimators from time-invariance estimating equations: a unifying approach”
12:00 noon – 1:30 pm Break for Lunch
1:30 pm – 2:45 pm Featured Discussion: BFF Four–Are We Converging?
Speaker: Nancy Reid, University of Toronto
Discussant: Deborah Mayo, Virginia Tech
2:45 pm – 3:00 pm Coffee Break
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm Invited Session
James M. Robins, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, “Coutnerexamples to Bayesian, Pure-Likelihoodist, and Conditional Inference in Biased-Coin Randomized Experiments and Observational Studies: Implications for Foundations and for Practice”
Larry Brown, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm Panel: Perspectives of the Pioneers
Panelists: Jim Berger, Duke University; Larry Brown, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; David Cox, Oxford University via remote participation; Don Fraser, Toronto University; Nancy Reid, Toronto University
Moderator: Vijay Nair, University of Michigan
Wednesday, May 3
9:00 am – 10:15 am Featured Discussion: Randomisation isn’t perfect but doing better is harder than you think
Speaker: Stephen Senn, Luxembourg Institute of Health
Discussant: Ned Hall, Harvard University
10:15 am – 10:30 am Coffee Break
10:30 am – 12:00 noon Invited Session
Jim Berger, Duke University, “An Objective Prior for Hyperparameters in Normal Hierarchical Models”
Harry Crane, Rutgers University
Peter Song, University of Michigan, “Confidence Distributions with Estimating Functions: Efficiency and Computing on Spark Platform”
12:00 noon – 1:30 pm Break for Lunch
1:30 pm – 2:45 pm Featured Discussion: Modeling Imprecise Degrees of Belief
Speaker: Susanna Rinard, Harvard University
Discussant: Andrew Gelman, Columbia University
2:45 pm – 3:00 pm Coffee Break
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm Invited Session
Nils Lid Hjort, University of Oslo, “Data Fusion with Confidence Distributions: The II-CC-FF Paradigm”
Gunnar Taraldsen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, “Improper priors and fiducial inference”
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm Panel: The Scientific Impact of Foundational Thinking
Panelists: Emery Brown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Massachusetts General Hospital; Paul Edlefsen, Hutch; Andrew Gelman, Columbia University; Regina Liu, Rutgers University; Donald B. Rubin, Harvard University
Moderator: Min-ge Xie, Rutgers University
Previous BFF Workshops:
BFF3 (Rutgers), BFF2 (East China Normal), and BFF1 (East China Normal)
Error Statistics Philosophy 
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