Bradley P. Carlin

Professor and Head, Division of Biostatistics

Mayo Professor in Public Health

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. Scott Berry, Dr. J. Jack Lee, and Dr. Peter Muller have just released a new textbook Bayesian Adaptive Methods for Clinical Trials , published by Chapman and Hall/CRC Press/Taylor and Francis. This book is intended as a handbook for those working in clinical trials who wish to expand their statistical toolkits to include Bayesian methods. These methods facilitate early stopping for efficacy, toxicity, or futility, as well as incorporation of historical information, equivalence studies, subgroup analysis, and a range of other challenging problems. The book covers methods relevant for Phases I, II, and III of the U.S. drug regulatory process; device trials are also featured prominently. The book does not include homework problems, but is generously endowed with examples and accompanying software written in WinBUGS, R, and several stand-alone packages freely available from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Department of Biostatistics Software Download site. Also, here is a nice review of the book that appeared in the August 2011 issue of Technometrics, and another nice review that appeared in the Sept 2011 issue of Biometrics.

Click to see how to order by phone or over the web (either directly from the publisher, where you can use the ASA member 15% discount code, 634LH, or via amazon.com. Potential instructors can request an inspection copy from Mr. Rob Calver at CRC. You can also click to see the book's table of contents, foreword, preface, and subject index, as well as most of the software and data sets.

Next, Dr. Carlin and his erstwhile senior colleague Dr. Tom Louis have just released the third edition of their textbook Bayesian Methods for Data Analysis , published by Chapman and Hall/CRC Press/Taylor and Francis. This latest version is aimed at MS and advanced undergraduates in math and statistics, and MS and PhD students in other fields who need to know how to fit high-dimensional statistical models to their datasets. The book includes a much gentler introduction to Bayesian hierarchical modeling, as well as a ton of new examples and WinBUGS code. Click to see how to order by phone or over the web (either directly from the publisher, where you can use the ASA member 15% discount code, 634LH, or via amazon.com). Potential instructors can request an inspection copy from Mr. Rob Calver at CRC. You can also click to see most of the data sets, WinBUGS, and R code used in the book.

A handy solutions manual, primarily authored by Dr. Carlin's former PhD student and Doctoral Dissertation Award winner, Dr. Laura Hatfield, is now available for all instructors adopting the text; email me or Rob Calver for more information. The new edition of the book has gotten very positive reviews; here are three from Statistics in Medicine, the Journal of Applied Statistics, and the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Finally here's a nice review of the book by Andrew Gelman, first author of the book's major competitor!

Finally, Dr. Carlin and his colleagues Dr. Sudipto Banerjee and Dr. Alan Gelfand have also coauthored a 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 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.
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!
To see some of my recent papers, please visit the U of M Biostat Research Report page. For older articles, you may want to search the JSTOR archive.

Speaking of older articles, you may be interested in the paper by 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.)

Click on this remarkably outdated picture of my three boys, Sam (now age 19), Josh (now age 17), and Nate (now age 13) to see some old family photos. You may also be interested in the homepage of my spouse, Caroline S. Carlin, PhD, who is a bigshot investigator at Medica Research Institute.
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, during the "Lucky Ones" era, 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 huskermax.com for team updates, schedules, game summaries, and more!

Here is Brad's page on how the Huskers are doing versus the spread this season. Also, you may wish to check out Rudy Moser's page on the probabilities of all the Huskers' possible final win-loss records this season!

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 ESPN 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[*at*]biostat[*dot*]umn[*dot*]edu
phone: (612) 624-6646; fax: (612) 626-0660

Last updated: July 26, 2012, when I should have been doing department head 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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