2026
Student Seminars: Yuwei Cheng
2:30–4:00 pm Jones 111
Thursday, May 7, 2026, at 2:30 PM, Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Ave.
Dissertation Defense Presentation
Yuwei Cheng, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Aligning Machine Learning Systems with Human Preferences: Robustness, Personalization, and Evaluation”
Student Seminar: Xueran Tao
2:00–2:30 pm Jones 111
Thursday, May 7, 2026, at 2:00 PM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis Presentation
Xueran Tao, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Finite-Sample Analysis of Prediction-Powered Inference for Linear Regression”
Student Seminar: Tianze Deng
1:30–2:00 pm Jones 111
Thursday, May 7, 2026, at 1:30 PM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis Presentation
Tianze Deng, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Queueing System Design with General Customer Abandonment: Priority Queues versus Dedicated Queues in Moderate Overload”
Student Seminar: Yuhan Wang
1:00–1:30 pm Jones 111
Thursday, May 7, 2026, at 1:00 PM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis Presentation
Yuhan Wang, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Ablation and Architectural Extensions of STAMP for Spatial Transcriptomics”
Student Seminar: Pippa Lin
12:00–12:30 pm Jones 111
Thursday, May 7, 2026, at 12:00 PM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis Presentation
Pippa Lin, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Linear Directions of Political Ideology in LLMs: Probing, Generalization, and Intervention”
Bahadur Memorial Lectures: Nancy Reid (Day 2)
3:00–4:00 pm DSI 105
Title: “All Models are Wrong”
Abstract: This talk will consider the assessment of semiparametric and other highly-parametrized models from the perspective of foundational principles of parametric statistical inference. It is cast as a generalised version of the Fisherian sufficiency/co-sufficiency separation, replacing out-of-sample prediction error by a type of within-sample prediction error. The theory is illustrated through several examples, including a post-reduction inference approach to confidence sets of sparse regression models. This is joint work with Heather Battey.
Student Seminar: Yilun Cai
2:00–2:30 pm Jones 111
Wednesday, May 6, 2026, at 2:00 PM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis Presentation
Yilun Cai, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Empirical Asset Pricing via Transformer”
Student Seminar: Dingyu Guo
1:30–2:00 pm Jones 111
Wednesday, May 6, 2026, at 1:30 PM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis Presentation
Dingyu Guo, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“A Possession-Based Forecasting Framework for NBA Games”
Student Seminar: Andrew Wang
11:00–11:30 am Jones 111
Wednesday, May 6, 2026, at 11:00 AM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis Presentation
Andrew Wang, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Online Quantile Regression with Constant Step-size Stochastic Approximation”
Student Seminar: Yuchen Pan
10:30–11:00 am Jones 111
Wednesday, May 6, 2026, at 10:30 AM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis Presentation
Yuchen Pan, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Forecasting Systemic Tail Risk in the Technology Sector Using Dynamic CoVaR Models”