Bradley P. Carlin

Mayo Professor in Public Health

Division of Biostatistics


Dr. Carlin has a Ph.D. and M.S. in statistics from the University of Connecticut, and a B.S. in mathematics and actuarial science from the University of Nebraska. He is a member of the University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center. His teaching and research interests focus on the development of Bayes and empirical Bayes methods for spatial and spatio-temporal data, especially techniques which take advantage of modern computing power. Dr. Carlin's full CV is downloadable in pdf format.

Dr. Carlin's teaching page contains information and syllabi on University of Minnesota courses he teaches, while his software page contains some programs (mostly useful in spatial statistics) written in some user-friendly languages, especially


Dr. Carlin and his colleagues Dr. Sudipto Banerjee and Dr. Alan Gelfand have coauthored a new textbook, Hierarchical Modeling and Analysis for Spatial Data , published by Chapman and Hall/CRC Press. Click to see the book's table of contents (also available in .pdf format), how to order by phone or over the web (either directly from the publisher, CRC Press, or via www.amazon.com), and many of the data sets and WinBUGS programs used in the book. A list of typos in the first and second printings (corrected in the third and subsequent printings) is also available.
Dr. Carlin and his erstwhile senior colleague Dr. Tom Louis have also coauthored a textbook, Bayes and Empirical Bayes Methods for Data Analysis , also published by Chapman and Hall/CRC Press. Click to see a brief description of the book, its table of contents, how to order by phone or over the web (either directly from the publisher, CRC Press, or via www.amazon.com), most of the data sets used in the book, and the WinBUGS software package for carrying out the associated Markov chain Monte Carlo computational methods! You can also check out a nice review of the book for the December 1997 JASA written by Prof. Betz Halloran of Emory University.
Upcoming presentations related to the books and the WinBUGS language:
Speaking of Bayes, here is the webpage devoted to the Bayesian Songbook, a collection of some of the material performed at the closing cabarets which follow the Valencia International Meetings on Bayesian Statistics . There are even videos of several Valencia 7 and 8 performances (including "Bayesian Believer") posted on Brad's YouTube page! You can also check out pictures and movies from the crazy ISBA 2000 Cabaret, the MCMSki 2005 party, or the JSM 2005 Dance Party, featuring the Space Heaters and the ASA All-Stars!
Some recent papers (may need to use "gunzip" before printing):

  1. Liang, S., Carlin B.P., and Gelfand, A.E., `` Analysis of Minnesota colon and rectum cancer point patterns with spatial and non-spatial covariate information,'' Research Report 2007-019, Division of Biostatistics, University of Minnesota, 2007. Submitted to Annals of Applied Statistics.

  2. Ma, H., Carlin, B.P., and Banerjee, S., `` Hierarchical and joint site-edge methods for Medicare hospice service region boundary analysis,'' Research Report 2006-010, Division of Biostatistics, University of Minnesota, 2006. Submitted to Annals of Applied Statistics.

  3. Reich, B., Hodges, J.S., and Carlin B.P., `` Spatial analyses of periodontal data using conditionally autoregressive priors having two classes of neighbor relations,'' J. Amer. Statist. Assoc., 102, 44-55, 2007.

  4. Spiegelhalter, D.J., Best, N.G., Carlin, B.P., and van der Linde, A., `` Bayesian measures of model complexity and fit,'' (with discussion and rejoinder) J. Roy. Statist. Soc., Ser. B, 64, 583-639, 2002. (Click to see the first three authors carefully describing their work at the Valencia 6 confererence, and all four authors (in the proper order!) celebrating at the pub after reading their paper at an RSS Ordinary Meeting on March 13, 2002.)

You can also get copies of other papers from the U of M Biostat Research Report ftp server. Or, check out the Markov Chain Monte Carlo Preprint Service at the University of Cambridge, U.K. For older articles, search the JSTOR archive.


Click on this picture of my three adorable boys, Sam (now age 14), Josh (now age 12), and Nate (now age 8) to see the family photo gallery! You also visit the homepage of my spouse, Caroline S. Carlin, PhD, since she is now a faculty member in Applied Economics!
Click here to visit my music page, which contains .mp3 files and lyrics for a few covers, song parodies, and even an original composition! My musical activities include being contemporary music coordinator for Good Sam United Methodist in Edina, coordinator/trombonist for the pep band for Minnesotans for Nebraska that plays for every Nebraska game at Joe Senser's in Bloomington, and, most recently, keyboardist and backing vocalist for Bacon's Rebellion, the band led by Twin Cities singer/songwriter Pat Bacon.
Speaking of Nebraska, check out a picture and a poster of the college football "Team of the 90's" (national champions `94, `95, `97), the Nebraska Cornhuskers! (In the picture, that's Miami QB Frank Costa lying on his back, having just been sacked again during the fourth quarter of the 1995 Orange Bowl.) Hear live play-by- play of Husker games, and see huskerpedia.com for team updates, schedules, game summaries, and more!

Here is Brad's page on the probability that the Huskers win the national title in football!

Relatedly, here is Tom Adams' page developing ideas originally published by me and David Breiter in Chance magazine on optimal strategies for playing NCAA basketball pools! Also, here's a short essay on tournament upsets (and whether they're really all that surprising) that I wrote for the New York Times in March, 2004.

You can also catch up on the lastest in college football generally via ESPNET/SportsZone or USA Today. The latter features the latest Sagarin ratings of team strengths, either by team or by conference.


Some of Brad's favorite web sites...


Brad Carlin
Division of Biostatistics
Mayo Mail Code 303
School of Public Health
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0392 U.S.A.
email: brad@biostat.umn.edu
phone: (612) 624-6646; fax: (612) 626-0660

Last updated: April 15, 2007, when I should have been doing committee work.
These pages continually under construction - please excuse the mess...

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those its author. The contents of this page have not been approved by the University of Minnesota, Garrison Keillor, or Orlando "Tubby" Smith. Ya you betcha.


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