2019 Anastasi Lecture: ‘The Bayesian Revolution, And Why You Should Care”‘

Speaker: David Kaplan, Ph.D.

Bayesian statistics has long been overlooked in the training of social and behavioral scientists. Bayesian statistics were considered controversial and, until recently, it was not feasible to conduct Bayesian statistical modeling because of its complexity and lack of software.

Recently, there has been great interest in the application of Bayesian methods, due to the availability of powerful (and free) statistical software tools that now make it possible to estimate simple or complex models. This talk provides a conceptual introduction to Bayesian statistics with a focus on its advantages over conventional statistics, particularly with respect to characterizing uncertainty and addressing the so-called “p-value problem.”

David Kaplan, Ph.D., is the Patricia Busk Professor of Quantitative Methods in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on the development of Bayesian statistical methods for education research, and is directed toward applications to large-scale cross-sectional and longitudinal survey designs. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education, a recipient of the Samuel J. Messick Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award from the APA Division 5, a recipient of the Alexander Von Humboldt Research Prize, and an honorary research fellow in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford.