Workshop on Bayesian Data Analysis

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Please read all the instructions provided in this description to ensure you get the most out of this workshop.

Venue Size: 30 people approx

Notice: We no longer use waiting lists for our meetups. Our conversion rate for the actual attendance list is pretty poor and we end up losing interested people.

Instead, we have an sign up list, and operate on a first-come, first-served basis. We have never been in a position to have to turn people away, and hopefully we never will, but it will be a possibility so please arrive in good time to make sure you get a place.

Many thanks to DIT Kevin Street for the venue. We really appreciate it.

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We continue our workshop series aimed at teaching people the basics of conditional probability and the use of Bayesian modelling for data analysis, especially the use of hierarchical models to capture relationships inherent in the structure of the data.

For those of you who attended my original workshops a few years back, the material we cover will be similar, but has now moved from BUGS and JAGS to using Stan, as I feel it is a much superior tool for this sort of work, so there should be lots of material to interest you as well.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT OUR WORKSHOPS

For those of you unfamiliar with our workshops, it is advised that everyone brings their own laptop to get the most out of it. The venue may have some power sockets, but it never hurts to have a fully-charged battery just in case. Wifi is spotty in DIT, but I will have an internet dongle that will provide connectivity for those of you unable to tether on your phone.

All the code and workshop materials are available in a BitBucket repository so it is advised that people download the materials in advance:

http://bitbucket.org/kaybenleroll/dublin_r_workshops

Please look in the wsbda201603/ directory.

The workshop will use a few packages, but these can be installed in advance by running the install_packages.R file in that directory. In addition, the use of rstan and Stan will require a C++ compiler. This is probably already available on Linux machines and Macs, for Windows users I recommend you install the Rtools software that is available at your friendly CRAN mirror:

https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/Rtools/

In this second workshop we will be making use of Stan, so please ensure you have the rstan package installed and working. Please note that the installation of it may take a bit of time to compile.

Please get in touch with me if you have any questions, and lots of help will be available on the night.