Presenter: Arthur Spirling 

Abstract: We consider the historical development of a characteristic crucial for the functioning and normative appeal of Westminster systems: cohesive legislative parties. To do this, we gather the universe of the twenty thousand parliamentary divisions that took place between 1836 and 1910 in the British House of Commons, construct a voting record for every Member of Parliament serving during this time, and carry out analysis that aims to both describe and explain the development...

Presenter: Andrew Ho 

Abstract: At some point early in our quantitative training, we learn the difference between ordinal scales and interval scales. There is a clear distinction. Ordinal scales, such as rankings, contain only information about order (1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place). Interval scales, such as time and temperature, have equal intervals between successive scale points (1 degree Celsius, 2 degrees Celsius, 3 degrees Celsius). We learn that these differences matter, because the vast majority of statistical analyses, from...

Presenter: Alan M. Zaslavsky 

Abstract: Balance of covariate distributions is crucial for an unconfounded descriptive or causal comparison between different groups. However, lack of overlap in the covariates is common in observational studies. We discuss weighting strategies for balancing covariates. A general class of weights --- the balancing weights --- that balance the expectation of the covariates in the treatment and the control groups is proposed. The methods rely on the propensity score and include several existing weights,...

Presenter: Scott W. Linderman 

Abstract: Scott Linderman will be speaking on discovering latent network structure from spiking data using Hawkes processes. Examples of this include: recovering neural connectivity from electrophysiological recordings; discovering interactions between stocks on the S&P 100; and identifying patterns in homicide data from Chicago.

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