Title: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data Science

Abstract: There are three factors responsible for the revolution brought about by artificial intelligence: (1) the constant increase in computational capacity, (2) the accumulation of large amounts of data generating insights and enabling the creation of data-driven products, and (3) the development of statistical learning theory and its algorithms. The alignment of these planets allowed the development of virtual assistants and chatbots, self-driving cars, the automatic translation  between languages, and the early detection of unspecified anomalies in vital signs. In this talk, I will present an overview of these developments from a historical point of view, focusing on the contributions brought by Statistics. I will illustrate this presentation with examples from my research on epidemiological surveillance using social media data, space-time demographic  forecasting, and the Bayesian spatial partitioning of space-time maps.

Biography:  Renato Assunção received his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Washington in 1994. He has been a researcher at ESRI Inc., Redlands, USA, since 2021 and a full professor in the Computer Science Department at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil, since 1988. His research focuses on developing algorithms and statistical methods for spatial data analysis, especially areal and point processes data. It is primarily concerned with the spatial analysis of risk appearing in many fields, such as epidemiological surveillance, sensor networks, and demographic problems. Amongst his honors is the 2020 ABE award.