STA 290 Seminar Series
Thursday, May 21, 2015, 4:10pm, MSB 1147 (Colloquium Room)
Refreshments at 3:30pm in MSB 4110 (Statistics Lounge)
Speaker: Javier Rojo
(University of Nevada, Reno)
Title: Body Mass Index, Obesity, Haseman-‐Elston, Orders by Dispersion, and Estimation Under Constraints
Abstract: Obesity has become a worldwide epidemic. The Hispanic population is especially susceptible to developing diabetes II as a consequence of obesity and genetic predisposition. México has become the most obese country, having surpassed the United States in the last few years. In this talk we will examine some data and discuss some recent studies linking genetic makeup to the likelihood of developing diabetes. Using data from studies in linkage analysis, it is observed that testing for linkage can be done by testing for a partial order of distributions based on dispersion. The Haseman-‐Elston model for linkage based on sib-‐paired data is also examined.
This leads to a problem of estimating distribution functions based on their spread, and estimators under such conditions are developed and their asymptotic properties delineated.