Statistics and Data Science Seminar
Peter McCullagh
John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Statistics and the College, University of Chicago
Some remarks on the use of trees in statistical models
Abstract: Trees arise naturally in the study of the evolution of a
population. Branching processes are the natural tool in the forward
direction, and coalescent processes are natural for the study of ancestral
relationships or lineages in reverse time.
A tree has a natural graphical representation, but for some purposes a
matrix representation is also useful.
In statistical work, a similarity matrix is a covariance matrix generated
by additive common factors with independent components. The set of
similarity matrices also coincides with the set of fragmentation trees.
Some issues arising in the use of structured covariance matrices of this
sort will be discussed.
Tea will begin at 3:15pm.
Wednesday September 20, 2006 at 3:30 PM in SEO 636