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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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This presentation will present the following perspective: When confronting a scientific problem, the field of statistics enters by viewing the problem as one where the scientific answer could be calculated if some missing data, hypothetical or real, were available. Thus, statistical effort should be devoted to three steps: 1. formulate the missing data that would allow this calculation, 2. stochastically fill in these missing data, and 3. do the calculations as if the filled-in data were available. This presentation discusses: conceptual benefits, such as causal inference using potential outcomes; computational benefits, such as the EM algorithm and related data augmentation methods based on MCMC; and inferential benefits, such as interval estimation and assessment of assumptions based on multiple imputation.
