The SnT is organising a distingushed lecture by Prof. Philip B. Stark, Professor of Statistics and Associate Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of California, Berkeley. The lecture takes place on Friday, 31 March 2017.
Date, time and location
Friday, 31 March 2017, 15:00
Room E004/005 (Ground floor), JFK Building, 29, avenue John F. Kennedy, L-1855
Booking is recommended via snt-events@uni.lu. The lecture will be followed by a reception.
Lecture abstract
Pseudo-random numbers are used in countless contexts, including jury selection, electronic casino games, physical and chemical simulations, numerical integration, random sampling, Monte Carlo methods, stochastic optimization, and cryptography.
They are used in scientific fields from sociology to particle physics. It’s tempting to think that the pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs) in software packages and programming languages in common use are “good enough” for most purposes. Resist the temptation. Pigeonhole arguments and empirical results show that PRNGs in statistical software packages and general purpose programming languages are not adequate for basic statistical purposes such as random sampling, generating random permutations, and the bootstrap – even for relatively small data sets.
Cryptographers have developed cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generators (CS-PRNGs), which provide a far better approximation to truly random numbers, as manufacturers of gambling machines are well aware. Statistical packages and general-purpose programming languages should use CS-PRNGs by default.
About the speaker
Philip B. Stark is Professor of Statistics and Associate Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He works on inference and uncertainty quantification in applications including astrophysics, earthquakes, ecology, elections, gender bias, legislation and litigation, particle physics, public health, and public policy.
He received a Presidential Young Investigator Award, the John Gideon Award for Election Integrity, the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Award for Research in the Public Interest, and the Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Transparency in Social Science. Stark currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the US Election Administration Commission. He holds an AB from Princeton University and a PhD from the University of California, San Diego.