short course Course intro to Bayesian inference, Barcelona, May 6-10

[Chris Merkord]

Registration is open for Transmitting Science course “Introduction to Bayesian Inference in Practice”, May 6th-10th, 2019, Barcelona (Spain).

Instructors:

Dr. Daniele Silvestro (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) and Tobias Hofmann (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)

Course overview

Bayesian methods have become standard practice in several fields, (e.g. phylogenetic inference, evolutionary (paleo)biology, genomics), yet understanding how this Bayesian machinery works is not always trivial.

The instructor will outline the relevant concepts and basic theory, but the focus of the course will be to learn how to do Bayesian inference in practice. He will show how to implement the most common algorithms to estimate parameters based on posterior probabilities, such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo samplers, and how to build hierarchical models.

The course will take a learn-by-doing approach, in which participants will implement their own MCMCs using R or Python (templates for both languages will be provided).

After completion of the course the participants will have gained a better understanding of how the main Bayesian methods implemented in many programs used in biological research work. Participants will also learn how to model at least basic problems using Bayesian statistics and how to implement the necessary algorithms to solve them.

Participants are encouraged to think of potential applications of Bayesian inference in their research, which we will discuss and try to implement during the course.

For more information please check the course webpage: http://www.transmittingscience.org/courses/statistics-and-bioinformatics/introduction-bayesian-inference-practice/