CPD174 - An Introduction to Bayesian Modelling Using greta

The SSA Canberra Branch warmly invites you to an in-person workshop on Bayesian Modelling using greta , taught by Professor Nick Golding (Telethon Kids Institute/Curtin University) and Dr Nick Tierney (Telethon Kids Institute). 

**Places for this in-person workshop in Canberra are strictly limited; please register ASAP to secure your place!**

About the workshop:

Often, statistical analyses require custom models that cannot be fitted using off-the shelf statistical software, but can be estimated by MCMC by specifying the model in specialised software, the most popular of which are BUGS, JAGS and Stan.  Greta is a package for statistical modelling in R that has three core differences to these available alternatives:

1. simple: greta models are written right in R, so there's no need to learn another language like BUGS or Stan

2. scalable: greta uses Google TensorFlow so it's fast even on massive datasets, and runs on CPU clusters and GPUs

3. extensible: it's easy to write your own R functions and packages using greta

We will start with simple linear models on real data, and gradually expand the models to be more complex and better represent the data. We will also have time at the end of the course to discuss fitting models specific to your own work - so feel free to bring along a problem you’d like to discuss.

About the presenters: 

Professor Nick Golding is an infectious disease modeller with a focus on globally-important pathogens. His work comb ines mathematical and statistical modelling, ecology, public health, and research software engineering. Since completing a PhD on mosquito ecology, he has developed models and maps of the risk posed by some of the world’s most important and neglected diseases – including malaria, Dengue fever, Chikungunya, Ebola, and COVID-19. He has a preference for semi-mechanistic Bayesian models applied to large, noisy datasets and developed the greta R package to handle both the scale and uniqueness of these types of models.

Dr. Nick Tierney completed his undergrad and honours in Psychological Science, then took an unconventional turn into a PhD in Statistics. He now works as a research software engineer with Dr. Nick Golding at the Telethon Kids Institute. He is currently working on improving and maintaining the greta (https://greta-stats.org/) R package for statistical modelling. He is also interested in implementing workflows to automate data analysis.  Dr. Tierney’s research interests are broad, but centred around improving data analysis. This includes exploratory data analysis, statistical modelling, diagnostics, and understanding how colour choice can impact decision making. Dr. Tierney is a strong believer in free and open source software, and has written several popular R packages to improve data analysis, which can be seen on his software page: http://njtierney.com/software. 

Requirements:

This course is designed for those who want to learn how to do Bayesian modelling using the greta software. We assume users have the following background/experience:

• Familiarity with R

• Experience using linear models

• A rudimentary understanding of Bayesian inference

We recommend trying to install the software from github on your laptop/machine ahead of time with remotes::install.github("greta-dev/greta") but we will also provide virtual environments to use in the course. Course materials will be made available online.

Course Objectives: 

After this course you will be able to:

• Fit and predict from Bayesian generalised linear models in greta

• Check model convergence and fit (including prior and posterior predictive checks)

• Summarise MCMC outputs

• Be able to fit more advanced models including mixture and hierarchical models 

• Create visualisations and tables of the model outputs for use in understanding model fit and for publication.

Say no more and sign me up!:

The workshop is strictly in person, running from 9am to 4:30pm (with breaks in between) on Wednesday 7 February, 2024. The workshop will be run at the CSIRO Waterhouse Theatre, Building 101, Clunies Ross St, Black Mountain, Canberra, ACT 2601.

Registration costs are as listed on this event website. Note registration includes morning and afternoon teas, plus lunch. 

Registrations close midnight Canberra time, Friday 2 February.

Cancellations received prior to midnight Canberra time Friday 2 February 2024 will be refunded, minus an administration fee. From then onwards, no part of the registration fee will be refunded. However, registrations are transferable within the same organisation. Please advise any changes to eo@statsoc.org.au.

If you have any questions, please SSA Canberra (ssacanberra@gmail.com) or Marie-Louise Rankin (eo@statsoc.org.au)