PhD students

Zane and Cixiao are currently working with me and Prof. Niall MacKay on statistical methodology for making forecasts given information and opinion from experts. This differs slightly from more established methodology developed for making forecasts given physical measurements from sensors or machines. A key difference is that the distributions of ‘measurement errors’ from machines tend to be fairly simple whereas the errors made by groups of people can be highly complex.

Zane Hassoun

Zane is currently looking at crowd-sourcing numeric forecasts and aggregating them in clever ways. More specifically, he is developing methodology for quickly detecting changes in forecasts as time progresses and new information arrives.

Cixiao Jiang

Cixiao is looking at textual arguments that accompany numeric forecasts. She is investigating how the text might be used to inform the aggregation of the numbers.