David Sprott Distinguished Lecture by Stephen Senn

Thursday, September 22, 2022 4:00 pm - 4:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Please Note: This seminar will be given online.

Distinguished Lecture Series

Stephen Senn
Consultant Statistician

Whatever Happened to Design-Based Inference?


What exactly should we think about appropriate analyses for designed experiments and why? If conditional inference trumps marginal inference, why should we care about randomisation? Isn’t everything just modelling? The Rothamsted School held that design matters. Taking an example of applying John Nelder’s general balance approach to a notorious problem, Lord’s paradox, I shall show that there may be some lessons for two fashionable topics: causal analysis and big data. I shall conclude that if we want not only to make good estimates but estimate how good our estimates are, design does matter.


Stephen Senn

Stephen SennStephen Senn has worked as a statistician but also as an academic in various positions in Switzerland, Scotland, England and Luxembourg. From 2011 to 2018 he was head of the Competence Center for Methodology and Statistics at the Luxembourg Institute of Health. He is the author of Cross-over Trials in Clinical Research (1993, 2002), Statistical Issues in Drug Development (1997, 2007,2021), Dicing with Death (2003,2022) and in 2009 was awarded the Bradford Hill Medal of the Royal Statistical Society. In 2017 he gave the Fisher Memorial Lecture. He is an honorary life member of PSI and ISCB.


David A. Sprott (1930-2013)

Professor David Sprott was the first Chair (1967-1975) of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo and first Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics (1967-1972). The David Sprott Distinguished Lecture Series was created in recognition of his tremendous leadership at a formative time of our department, as well as his highly influential research in statistical science.