Speaker: Joe R. Hill, Ph.D., QBX Consulting
Date and Time: May 20, 2026 7.00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED
Abstract: This talk is a tribute to Prof. Carl Morris. It is based on three of his papers on Natural Exponential Families with Quadratic Variance Functions (NEF-QVFs), and a book we were writing together. The talk derives Carl's "triangle diagram", which shows the relationships between the six NEF-QVFs and their conditional distributions, conjugate families, and marginal distributions. In particular, it shows that the six Pearson families are the conjugate families for the six NEF-QVFs, which is why Carl and I call them the Pearson Conjugate Families (PCFs). At Carl's retirement from Harvard, Prof. Joe Blitzstein compared the genius of the six NEF-QVFs to that of the five Platonic solids. He said the "triangle diagram" allows us a glimpse into how a statistics master approaches his craft. If successful, the talk will infect the audience with the same passion Carl and I have for this beautiful theory. The PDF file of slides will be made available after the talk.
Short Bio: Joe R. Hill received his Ph.D. from UT Austin in 1986, under the supervision of Carl Morris. He worked at Electronic Data Systems (EDS) / Hewlett-Packard (HP) / HP Enterprise Services / DXC Technology from 1986 to 2022. He had many roles during that time, including R & D Specialist and Chief Architect for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). He was an EDS and HP Fellow for 17 years. Since retiring in October of 2022, Joe has been working on a book, originally with Carl Morris, now with Ed Bedrick, and with generous help from several others. He is an active member of the Austin chapter of the ASA.
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Charu Gupta
AstraZeneca
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