Department of Biostatistics Seminar/Workshop Series

Back to the Future: Life beyond R, by going back to Lisp.

Anthony J. Rossini, Sc.D.

Group Head, Modeling and Simulation Statistics
Novartis Pharma AG, Modeling and Simulation Global Line Function

Friday, September 18, 3:00-4:00pm, Light Hall 512

Intended Audience: Persons interested in applied statistics, statistical theory, epidemiology, health services research, clinical trials methodology, statistical computing, statistical graphics, R users or potential users

Biostatistical computing environments are driven by programmer-centric approaches. We do what we do, according to skills as numerical programmers and data manipulation experts. This talk describes an on-going research program to change statistical computing to be computing for statistical work (consulting, collaboration, research), where statistical procedures become first class objects, not just functions. The components, including statistical procedure representation, knowledge integration and management, and generalized reporting frameworks, are being developed in Common Lisp. This system is designed from the ground-up to be eventually usable in a regulatory computing environment within commercial Pharmaceutical Development, though its current goal is to demonstrate a novel theory of statistical computing.