There’s so much we don’t know
but we’ve been brainwashed to think that we do.
I am currently visiting with Prof. Ayala Cohen, head of the statistics lab at the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), and my PhD advisor.
My office is right at the center of the action of the IE&M faculty, and I am having endless dejavu moments from my 5 years of grad school here. So many familiar faces! Not only faculty, but also many old-timer staff, and even fellow students who are here in new roles.
The main adjustment is moving from "letter" to A4 size paper.
IIMC is the first residential business school that I have seen: all grad students live on campus! My gracious host Dean (cum statistician!) Saibal Chattopadhyay gave me a tour on campus and a "tour" of their different programs.
The talk "Explanatory vs. Predictive Modeling in Information systems Research" lead to some heated debates. Questions were raised such as "why should historians care about prediction?"; the nature of sequential analysis; and what a "model" means to statisticians versus the rest of the world.
"To Explain or To Predict?", presented at MBS and RMIT, was followed by lively discussions with audiences that included researchers from a wide range of academia: political science, behavioral science, medicine, ecology, economics, information systems, and statistics. I've learned more about the status of predictive research in these different areas, and indeed it is alarming. I thank my gracious hosts Chris Lloyd (MBS) and Basil de Silva (RMIT) for these stimulating exchanges.
Prof Shmueli presented her work on "Explanatory Modeling vs. Predictive Modeling in Scientific Research" at the seminar series of the Econometrics & Business Economics group at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. The talk was followed by a lively discussion of the differences and meaning of explanatory modeling and statistical modeling.
Prof Shmueli is visiting with the department of econometrics and business statistics at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia in Jan-Feb 2009.
Prof. Galit Shmueli, Institute of Service Science, College of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, 101 Kuang Fu Road Sec. 2, Hsinchu 30013 Taiwan
徐茉莉 博士, 服務科學研究所 特聘教授, 國立清華大學, 30013新竹市光復路二段101號