Keep it casual with the Casual Inference podcast. Your hosts Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray talk all things epidemiology, statistics, data science, causal inference, and public health. Sponsored by the American Journal of Epidemiology.
In this episode, Noah Greifer discusses propensity score weighting, R packages like WeightIt and MatchIt, and practical advice for causal inference, including targeting different populations and interpreting balance. The conversation covers the nuances of overlap weights, balance diagnostics, M-estimation, and the importance of balancing statistical rigor with audience understanding. Noah shares insights on numerical differentiation, chain rules, and the value of making statistical methods accessible through R packages.
Lucy and Ellie chat about large language models, chat interfaces, and causal inference. Do LLMs Act as Repositories of Causal Knowledge?: https://arxiv.org/html/2412.10635v1 Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade . Edited by Cameron Bopp ....
Lucy chats with Len Testa about a recent analysis he did which combined over 150 publicly available data sources to answer a question about the affordability of Disney World. Len's Deep Dive Post on the Touring Plans Blog [ Blog Post ] Wall Street Journal Artcile, "Even Disney Is Worried About the High Cost of a Disney Vacation" [ Article ] Follow along on Bluesky: Len: @lentesta.bsky.social Ellie: @EpiEllie.bsky.social Lucy: @LucyStats.bsky.social 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph ...
Alyssa Bilinski, Peterson Family Assistant Professor of Health Policy, and Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, at Brown University School of Public Health. Her research focuses on developing novel methods for policy evaluation and applying these to identify interventions that most efficiently improve population health and well-being. Episode notes: PNAS paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2302528120 Shuo Feng’s pre-print: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.08.2430533...
Edward Kennedy Associate Professor, Department of Statistics & Data Science, Carnegie Mellon. ehkennedy.com Evaluating a Targeted Minimum Loss-Based Estimator for Capture-Recapture Analysis: An Application to HIV Surveillance in San Francisco, California: https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/193/4/673/7425624 Doubly Robust Capture-Recapture Methods for Estimating Population Size: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01621459.2023.2187814 Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of E...
Sheree Bekker & Stephen Mumford are Co-directors of the Feminist Sport Lab and have a book coming soon: “Open Play: the case for feminist sport”, coming Spring 2025. Reaktion Books (UK), University of Chicago Press (US). Sheree Bekker: Associate Professor, University of Bath, Department for Health , Centre for Qualitative Research Centre for Health and Injury and Illness Prevention in Sport Stephen Mumford, Professor of Metaphysics, Durham University A Author of Dispositions (Oxford, 1998), Russ...
Erick Scott is founder of cStructure, a causal science startup. Erick has expertise in medicine, public health, and computational biology. [email protected] “A causal roadmap for generating high-quality real-world evidence” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10603361/ Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Cameron Bopp...
Nima Hejazi is an assistant professor in biostatistics at Harvard University. His methodological work often draws upon tools and ideas from semi- and non-parametric inference, high-dimensional and large-scale inference, targeted or debiased machine learning (e.g., targeted minimum loss estimation, method of sieves), and computational statistics. Surprised by the Hot Hand Fallacy? A Truth in the Law of Small Numbers by Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44955325 Nima i...
Aaditya Ramdas is an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, in the Departments of Statistics and Machine Learning. His research interests include game-theoretic statistics and sequential anytime-valid inference, multiple testing and post-selection inference, and uncertainty quantification for machine learning (conformal prediction, calibration). His applied areas of interest include neuroscience, genetics and auditing (real-estate, finance, elections). Aaditya received the IMS Peter ...
Ingrid is a doctoral student in Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Winning cookie recipe Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Cameron Bopp...
Nick Huntington-Klein is an Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Albers School of Business and Economics, Seattle University. His research focus is econometrics, causal inference, and higher education policy. He’s also the author of an introductory causal inference textbook called The Effect and the creator of a number of Stata packages for implementing causal effect estimation procedures. Nick’s book, online version: https://theeffectbook.net/ The Paper of How: https://onlinelibrary.wi...
Lucy and Ellie chat about immortal time bias, discussing a new paper Ellie co-authored on clone-censor-weights. The Clone-Censor-Weight Method in Pharmacoepidemiologic Research: Foundations and Methodological Implementation: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40471-024-00346-2 Immortal time in pregnancy: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36805380/ Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of...
Mark van der Laan is a professor of statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on developing statistical methods to estimate causal and non-causal parameters of interest, based on potentially complex and high dimensional data from randomized clinical trials or observational longitudinal studies, or from cross-sectional studies. Center for Targeted Learning, Berkeley: https://ctml.berkeley.edu/ A causal roadmap: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37900353/ Short cours...
Ellie and Lucy kick off the season and introduce our new executive buzzer, Melita! Melita is a masters student in statistics at Wake Forest University and will be helping out with the podcast (and keeping Lucy and Ellie from using too much jargon!) Pros & Cons of RCT paper: Fernainy, P., Cohen, A.A., Murray, E. et al. Rethinking the pros and cons of randomized controlled trials and observational studies in the era of big data and advanced methods: a panel discussion. BMC Proc 18 (Suppl 2), 1 (20...
We are re-releasing an episode from 2021 in remembrance of Ralph D'Agostino, Sr . Ellie Murray and Lucy D’Agostino McGowan chat with Ralph D’Agostino Sr. and Ralph D’Agostino Jr. about their careers in statistics, looking back at how things have developed and forward at where they see the world of statistics and epidemiology going. Ralph D’Agostino Sr. was a professor of Mathematics/Statistics, Biostatistics, and Epidemiology at Boston University. He was the lead biostatistician for the Framingh...
Ellie and Lucy chat with Dr. Cat Hicks, VP of Research Insights and Director of Developer Success Lab at Pluralsight Flow, about evidence science. Follow along on Twitter: Cat: @grimalkina The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com...
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat about a "Causal Quartet" and spend some extra time on M-Bias! Lucy, Travis, & Malcom's Causal Quartet Paper Lucy's quartets R package Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com...
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat about ENAR 2023 and Targeted Learning! Targeted Learning in R Handbook Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com...
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with #EpiCookieChallenge winner, Viktoria Gastens! Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Viktoria: @VikiGastens Viktoria's Lab: @PopHealthLabCH Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com...
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat about confounding! ✍️ Lucy's new paper: Sensitivity Analyses for Unmeasured Confounders Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com...
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat about randomized controlled trials, thinking about efficacy vs effectiveness and saftey vs safetiness. ✍️ Frank Harrell's blog post "Randomized Clinical Trials Do Not Mimic Clinical Practice, Thank Goodness" Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com...
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Maria Glymour, Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatstics at UCSF and incoming chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Boston University. Maria successfully convinces Ellie and Lucy that instrumental variables can be very useful in epidemiology. Follow up: ✍️ Andrew Heiss's blog post on marginal and conditional effects for GLMMs Follow along on Twitter: Maria Glymour: @MariaGlymour The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie ...
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat about critiquing methods research, average treatment effects, and positivity violations! Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade...
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Travis Gerke, Director of Data Science at The Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium (PCCTC). This episode has lots of hot takes and lots of love for logistic regression! Follow along on Twitter: Travis Gerke: @travisgerke The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com...
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat about counterfactuals! Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com...
In this episode Ellie Murray and Lucy D'Agostino McGowan chat with Enrique Schisterman, Perelman Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics at the University of Pennsylvania, about the future of epidemiology. Follow along on Twitter: Enrique: @eschisterman1 The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade...
In this episode we play the audio from a recent panel discussion co-sponsored by UNC TraCS, Duke University and Wake Forest U CTSA Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design (BERD) Cores. The panelists were Charles Poole (Associate Professor of Epidemiology, UNC) Lucy D'Agostino McGowan, and Charles Scales (Associate Professor of Surgery, Duke University) and it was facilitated by Marcella Boynton (Assistant Professor, General Internal Medicine, UNC/NC TraCS). 🎥 The video of the panel can ...
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Sander Greenland, Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology and Statistics at UCLA. Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com...
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Toyya Pujol, Operations Researcher at RAND Corporation. Follow along on Twitter: Toyya: @toyyapujol The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats...
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Maggie Makar , Presidential postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. Follow along on Twitter: Maggie: @Maggiemakar The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats Slide link : https://bit.ly/3DnQai5 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com...
