statistics

Graduate students in biological sciences attend computation bootcamp

September 11, 2017

For a week before their first courses begin, incoming graduate students from every BSD graduate program will travel to Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. for a weeklong “bootcamp” session. [Read more]

Quality of psychiatric treatment, not number of beds, should be focus of suicide prevention

June 14, 2017

Inpatient room at the UChicago Medicine Center for Care and Discovery

A statistical analysis by UChicago's Robert Gibbons argues against the conclusion that the declining number of psychiatric inpatient beds has led to increased suicide rates. [Read more]

Computer test measures suicide risk in just two minutes

May 9, 2017

Prof. Robert Gibbons has developed a new computerized adaptive test that can accurately measure a patient’s suicide risk in just two minutes without the need for a clinical interview. [Read more]

Special agents to help speed research

April 26, 2017

A solution to speed research by scientists at the Computation Institute looks to a method used regularly by films and video games: agent-based simulation. [Read more]

Moore Foundation selects Matthew Stephens for Data-Driven-Discovery grant

October 8, 2014

Matthew Stephens, professor in statistics and human genetics, has received a Data-Driven Discovery Award from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to develop statistical and computational analysis tools for the large datasets being generated in the biological sciences. [Read more]

A Crack in the Safe of Genomic Studies

May 29, 2012

As genotyping becomes cheaper and more routine, the optimism about the medical benefits is laced with paranoia about genetic privacy. Personal genetics businesses promise the tighest security with their customers’ DNA test results, electronic [Read more]

Alan Turing’s Underrated Biology

March 19, 2012

By Rob Mitchum Alan Turing is best known as the father of the modern computer, a skillful World War II codebreaker, and a pioneer in the study of artificial intelligence. But in the last years before Turing’s death at age 41, he aimed his [Read more]

Thinking Outside the Black Box on Antidepressants

February 13, 2012

By Rob Mitchum In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration placed their equivalent of a scarlet letter on the antidepressant fluoxetine. Acting on the compiled results of several clinical trials, the FDA affixed its foreboding “black box [Read more]

The Curve That Changed the World

August 10, 2011

Let’s start with a statistic: almost 2,000 citations a year. One paper by Paul Meier, the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Distinguished Service Professor emeritus of statistics, pharmacological and physiological sciences, medicine, and the college, [Read more]

When Academia is a Family Business

August 4, 2011

There’s something quaint and charming about a family business, where multiple generations work shoulder to shoulder to keep an enterprise afloat. But when the business in question is academia and the salaries are paid by tax dollars, suddenly [Read more]