Tutorial- Monday at 10:00 AM EDT
Title: The Epistemological Superiority of Bayesian Inference Over Frequentist Inference
Presenters: Stephen J. Ruberg, Analytix Thinking, LLC & Purdue University

Abstract:
After a bit of history, I will share a bit of my journey from an exclusively frequentist upbringing and professional career to my profound belief in Bayesian thinking/inference. On that journey, others have worked to convince me, and I have had to convince myself as to the value of Bayesian thinking and inference. I will share how I now use examples and analogies to convince others as we seek to infer what is likely to be true. I have found the stories, thought experiments, and examples have resonated with non-statisticians and have resulted in enlightening those who are naïve to Bayesian thinking – i.e., who are stuck in the p-value world. Along the way I will share some new work that I have derived relating to p-values and posterior probabilities and a new ideas (at least to me) about the probability of a false positive finding.

Bio:
Dr. Stephen J. Ruberg received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Thomas More College, an MS in Statistics from Miami of Ohio, and a PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Cincinnati.

Steve worked in the pharma industry for 38 years where he worked in all phases of drug development and commercialization – from R&D to Business Analytics. In his last 10 years at Lilly, he formed the Advanced Analytics Hub for which he was the Scientific Leader and ultimately the Distinguished Research Fellow. Since his retirement, he has formed his own consulting company, Analytix Thinking. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Statistics at Purdue University.

He has been a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) since 1994, was given the Career Achievement Award by Quantitative Scientists in the Pharmaceutical Industry and was elected a Fellow of International Statistics Institute.

Dr. Ruberg has served in many leadership roles related to the pharmaceutical industry and the statistical profession. He received an FDA Commissioner Special Citation for contributions to standards development, and most notably, he served on a select Advisory Board to Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt in the George W. Bush Administration for creating strategies involving the development and use of electronic medical records.

Dr. Ruberg has published and presented extensively on a wide variety of statistical topics related to preclinical and clinical drug development. Dr. Ruberg’s current research interest include estimands, subgroup identification and Bayesian methods for clinical drug development.