The School of Industrial and Systems Engineering welcomes Bradley Efron, Max H. Stein Professor of Statistics and Biostatistics in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, as the featured guest for its 2010 Distinguished Lecture.

Abstract:
Familiar statistical estimates such as batting
averages, political polls, and medical trial results are obtained by
direct observation of cases of interest. Sometimes, though, we can
learn from the experience of "others": for instance there may be
information about Player A's batting ability in the observed averages
of Players B, C, and D. In his presentation, Professor Efron will
present several examples showing how this works in practice,
indicating some of the surprising theoretical ideas involved. The
talk is mainly descriptive in nature, and is intended for a general
scientific audience.

About Dr. Efron:
Bradley Efron is the Max H. Stein Professor of Statistics and
Biostatistics at Stanford University's School of Humanities and
Sciences and the Department of Health Research and Policy with the
School of Medicine. He completed his undergraduate work in
mathematics at the California Institute of Technology, and earned his
doctorate in statistics from Stanford in 1964, joining the Stanford
faculty that same year. He was Associate Dean for the School of
Humanities and Sciences from 1987 to 1990, served a term as Chair of
the Faculty Senate as well as three terms as Chair of the Department
of Statistics, and continues as Chairman of the Mathematical and
Computational Sciences Program. He has served as president of the
American Statistical Association and of
the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He is a past editor of the  Journal of the American Statistical Association and is presently
the founding editor of the  Annals of Applied Statistics.

Among the numerous honors that Efron has received are Fellowships of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Statistical
Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the Royal
Statistical Society, the International Statistical Institute and the
MacArthur Fellows Program of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences,
a recipient of the Ford Prize of the Mathematical Association of
America and of both the Wilks Medal and the Noether Prize of the
American Statistical Association. Efron was awarded the 1998 Parzen Prize for Statistical Innovation by Texas A&M University, and the first-ever
Rao Prize for outstanding research in statistics by Pennsylvania
State University in 2003. He received the 2005 National Medal of
Science "for his contributions to theoretical and applied statistics,
especially the bootstrap sampling technique; for his extraordinary
geometric insight into nonlinear statistical problems; and for
applications in medicine, physics and astronomy."