Adrian Raftery from the University of Washington will be visiting the ESRC Centre for Population Change on 13 November to host a seminar on Bayesian population reconstruction, a new method for estimating past populations by age and sex, with fully probabilistic statements of uncertainty.
Bayesian population reconstruction is designed for the kind of data commonly collected in demographic surveys and censuses and can be applied to countries with widely varying levels of data quality. It simultaneously estimates age-specific population counts, vital rates and net migration from fragmentary data while formally accounting for measurement error. As inputs, it takes initial bias-corrected estimates of age-specific population counts, vital rates and net migration. The output is a joint posterior probability distribution which yields fully probabilistic interval estimates of past vital rates and population numbers by age and sex. This is joint work with Mark Wheldon, Patrick Gerland and Samuel Clark.
This event will be held on Wednesday 13 November 2013 at 12pm in B58/2097, Highfield Campus.
Full information at: www.cpc.ac.uk/seminars/?link=home.php&id=117