On Science
Speaker: PreetumTitle: On Science
Date: 01 Oct 2018 5:30pm-7:00pm
Location: Maxwell-Dworkin 123
Food: Indian food
Abstract: This talk will be about science (the non-theoretical, non-computer kind). I’ll discuss some things I’ve been interested in recently, related to the scientific process and science in general. We’ll start with the issue of “adaptive” science (where a scientist wants to first collect a data set, and then look at it to propose hypotheses, instead of vice versa) – and I’ll discuss a recent simple proposal we have (joint with Jarek) giving a statistically-sound, sample-efficient methodology for this setting. If time and energy permits, I’ll also talk about causal inference (as a potentially promising new way of designing experiments), and recent developments here. And finally, we can try to think about how to formalize “hypothesis testing for theories” – for example: what would it take to be convinced of, say, Newtonian mechanics?