Allen Downey
Allen Downey is a professor emeritus at Olin College and Principal Data Scientist at PyMC Labs. He is the author of several books -- including Think Python, Think Bayes, and Probably Overthinking It -- and a blog about programming and data science. He is a consultant and instructor specializing in Bayesian statistics. He received a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and Bachelor's and Master's degrees from MIT.
Session
Why do male test takers consistently score about 30 points higher than female test takers on the mathematics section of the SAT? Does this reflect an actual difference in math ability, or is it an artifact of selection bias—if young men with low math ability are less likely to take the test than young women with the same ability?
This talk presents a Bayesian model that estimates how much of the observed difference can be explained by selection effects. We’ll walk through a complete Bayesian workflow, including prior elicitation with PreliZ, model building in PyMC, and validation with ArviZ, showing how Bayesian methods disentangle latent traits from observed outcomes and separate the signal from the noise.
No prior knowledge of Bayesian statistics is required; attendees should be familiar with Python and common probability distributions.