Lecture - Prof Peter McCullagh - Vital variables and health sequences
04/04/2016 17:00 to 04/04/2016 19:00 (Europe/Luxembourg)
Strassen,
Luxembourg
Speaker
Prof Peter McCullagh is Professor at the Department of Statistics of the University of Chicago and currently visiting the Oxford University as Eastman Professor.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was this year’s Fisher Memorial Lecturer and has been working in a number of fields, including generalised linear models and statistical inference.
Abstract
The focus of a survival study is partly on the distribution of survival times, and partly on the health or quality of life of patients while they live. Health varies over time, and survival is the most basic aspect of health, so the two aspects are closely intertwined.
Depending on the nature of the study, a range of variables may be measured; some constant in time, others not; some regarded as responses, others as explanatory risk factors; some directly and personally health-related, others less directly so. We begin by classifying variables that may arise in such a setting, emphasizing in particular, the mathematical distinction between vital variables, non-vital variables and external or exogenous variables.
The goal is to construct a family of continuous-time stochastic process for vital health variables, and to use such models for the analysis of data collected intermittently in time, especially in situations where mortality is appreciable.