[PyMCon] Missing Value Imputation with Item Response Theory - Q&A

🎙️ Speaker: Allen Downey, Ricardo Vieira | ⏰ Time: 3 pm UTC / 7 am PT / 10 am ET / 4 pm Berlin

In many large surveys, not every respondent is asked every question, and not every respondent answers the questions they are asked. So how can we compare people who answer different sets of questions? One solution is to use item response theory (IRT) to impute missing responses -- and nothing goes better with IRT than Bayesian methods!

In this talk, we report the results of a friendly competition -- a bake-off -- between two approaches to this problem, one using grid algorithms and a simplified model, the other using PyMC and a more detailed model. We'll discuss the implementations, compare the results, and outline their pros and cons.

Content:
🎙️ Async Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyznG61myy0
📽️ Interview video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvIStfmP1NU
📝 Slides: https://tinyurl.com/bbo1123
👉 Discourse Post for more details and discussion: https://discourse.pymc.io/t/13403

📢 Note: This session is exclusively for Q&A. We kindly request you to watch the recording before joining the event. For additional information and further discussion, please refer to this Discourse post.

💼 About the Speaker:

1. Allen Downey
   Allen is a curriculum designer at Brilliant and Professor Emeritus at Olin College, and the author of Think Python, Think Bayes, Think Stats and other books related to computer science and data science.
   He writes a blog about Bayesian statistics and related topics called Probably Overthinking It. And he is working on a book, also called Probably Overthinking It, that will be published by University of Chicago Press in 2023. If you would like to get an occasional update about the book, please join my mailing list.
   Dr. Mahmood is a neuroscientist with a PhD from Brandeis University, where he investigated the neural coordination of taste. His research, initially using electrophysiology to probe brain region interactions, hints at a complex network processing flavors. His forthcoming studies aim to unravel this network further, exploring the directional flow of neural information and the impact of feedback mechanisms in taste perception.

🔗 Connect with Allen:
👉 Website: https://allendowney.substack.com/
👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allendowney/
👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/AllenDowney
👉 Mastodon: @[allendowney@fosstodon.org](mailto:allendowney@fosstodon.org)

1. Ricardo Vieira
   Ricardo Vieira is a PyMC developer and data scientist at PyMC Labs. He spent several years teaching himself Statistics and Computer Science at the expense of his official degrees in Psychology and Neuroscience.

🔗 Connect with Ricardo:
👉 Website: https://ricardov94.github.io/posts/
👉 GitHub: https://github.com/ricardoV94

🤝 Sponsor
We thank our sponsors for supporting PyMC and the PyMCon Web Series. If you would like to sponsor us, contact us for more information.

Adia Lab is an independent, Abu Dhabi-based laboratory dedicated to basic and applied research in data and computational sciences.
ADIA Lab focuses on societally-important topics such as climate change and energy transition, blockchain technology, financial inclusion and investing, decision making, automation, cybersecurity, health sciences, education, telecommunications, and space, by conducting cutting-edge research in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and High-Performance Computing.

📖 Code of Conduct:
Please note that participants are expected to abide by PyMC's Code of Conduct.

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