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Morris H. DeGroot Memorial Lecture |
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| September 16, 2005. 4:15 -- 5:30 pm - Rangos Ballrooms 2 and 3 (University Center) |
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Professor Donald Rubin will present the
eighth Morris H. DeGroot Memorial Lecture,
given in
conjunction with the 2005 Workshop.
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| Causal Inference when Faced with "Censoring" Due to Death |
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Causal inference is best understood using potential outcomes, which
include all post treatment quantities. The use of potential outcomes to
define causal effects is particularly important in more complex settings,
i.e., observational studies or randomized experiments with complications
such as noncompliance. Here we deal with the issue of estimating the
casual effect of a treatment on a primary outcome that is "censored" by an
intermediate outcome, for example, the effect of a drug treatment on
Quality of Life (QOL) in a randomized experiment where some of the
patients die before their QOL can be assessed. Because both QOL and death
are post-randomization quantities, they both should be considered
potential outcomes, and the effect of treatment versus control on QOL is
only well-defined for the subset of patients who would live under either
treatment or control. Another application is to an educational program
designed to increase final test scores, which are not defined for those
who drop out of school before taking the test. A further application is
to studies of the effect of job-training programs on wages, where wages
are only defined for those who are employed, and thus the effect of the
job-training program on wages is only well-defined for the subset of
individuals who would be employed whether or not they were trained. Some
empirical results are presented from Zhang, Rubin and Mealli (2004), which
indicate that this framework can lead to new insights because the
analysis is not predicated on traditional econometric assumptions.
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Past DeGroot lecturers have been
Adrian F.M. Smith, A. Philip Dawid, James O. Berger, Bradley
Efron, Persi Diaconis, Sir David Cox and Steven Stigler. |
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Morris H. DeGroot |
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June 8, 1931 to November 2, 1989 |
| Morris H. DeGroot came to Carnegie Mellon as an Assistant Professor of
Mathematics in 1957 and was appointed founding Head of the Department
of Statistics in 1966. In 1984, Morrie was named University Professor,
which is the highest honor Carnegie Mellon bestows on a faculty
member. |
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Morrie led an unusually active and productive academic life. He wrote
three books, edited four volumes and authored over one hundred
papers. He was the recipient of several awards, including the Otto
Wirth Award for outstanding scholarship from the Roosevelt University
Alumni Association. He was an elected fellow of the American
Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the
International Statistical Institute, the Econometric Society and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. Most of his
research was on the theory of rational decision-making under
uncertainty. |
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His Optimal Statistical Decisions helped educate a generation
of statisticians and is one of the great books in the field. Published
in 1970 and subsequently translated into both Russian and Polish, it
provided an elegant and comprehensive treatment of a subject that has
since come to be recognized as an essential part of statistics and of
science as a whole. In 1975, his undergraduate text Probability and
Statistics was published. A model of what a textbook should be, it
played an important role in mathematical statistics curricula
throughout the country. |
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| Organized by: |
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