Statistics Undergraduate Research Seminar, Fall 2006

Time: 12-1pm Wednesdays
Place: 1011 Evans Hall
Course: STAT 98.1 / STAT 198.4, 1 unit
Course Control Numbers: 87441 (STAT 98) / 87528 (STAT 198)
Coordinators: Greg Hather, David Purdy, and Professor Philip Stark

Course Description: The purpose of this seminar series is to give students a view of career possibilities in statistics, including research areas and areas of application in academia, government, and the private sector. Speakers include faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and statisticians working for government and in the private sector.

Course Details: A two page paper is due on November 29th. The paper should be an annotated bibliography of 5 references associated with one of the topics presented. Grading for the course is P/NP. Students will pass the course if they turn in a satisfactory paper and miss no more than 2 seminars.

Sep 6: Forecasting Earthquakes
Philip Stark, Professor, Department of Statistics, UC Berkeley

Sep 13: Language, auctions, spam, and machine learning
David Purdy, Graduate student, Department of Statistics, UC Berkeley

Sep 20: Using Hollywood-style special effects to quantify errors in spatial data
Phillip Price, Scientist, Environmental Energy Technologies Division, LBNL

Sep 27: Considering graduate school
Colette Patt, Director, Science Student Diversity Programs, UC Berkeley

Oct 4: Vioxx, pacemakers with electrical shorts , HIV prevention in Africa, exposure to Dioxin and DDT--or what I did last week
Nick Jewell, Professor of Biostatistics and Statistics, UC Berkeley

Oct 11: What Political Campaigns Can -- and Can't -- Learn From Polling
Dan Schnur, Lecturer of Political Science, UC Berkeley

Oct 18: Clopidogrel in Acute Stroke and Transient Ischemic Attack
Trinh Pham, Analyst, Department of Neurology, UCSF

Oct 25: Statistics in the Courtroom: Phylogenetic Analysis as a Forensic Tool
Sebastien Roch, Graduate student, Department of Statistics, UC Berkeley

Nov 1: Roundtable discussion about graduate school
Statistics and Biostatistics graduate students, UC Berkeley

Nov 8: Statistics in the business world
Gilbert Fitzgerald, Director of Internet Marketing, eBay

Nov 15: Using Statistics for Good in the Pharmaceutical Industry
Aimee Foreman, Senior Statistical Analyst, Ovation Research Group

Nov 22: Mixture models for DNA sequence analysis
Greg Hather, Graduate student, Department of Statistics, UC Berkeley

Nov 29: Statisticians, mathematicians, and the NSA
Mark Jacobsen and Joe McCloskey, National Security Agency

Dec 6: The Job Search
David Purdy, Graduate student, Department of Statistics, UC Berkeley