[Statlist] Seminar Lecture in Statistics - Statistics Group, University of Neuchâtel

[KONDYLIS Atanassios]

Seminar Lecture in Statistics

Tuesday 25-01-2005 - 11h 00 
Statistics Group, Espace de l'Europe 4, Neuchâtel

Prof. Ali S . Hadi
Department of Mathematics, The American University in Cairo and Department of Statistical Sciences, Cornell University.
ahadi at aucegypt.edu or ali-hadi at cornell.edu

Modelling Extreme Events Data

In some statistical applications, the interest is centered on estimating some population characteristics (e.g., the average rainfall, the average temperature, the median income, etc.) based on random samples taken from a population under study. In other areas of applications, we are not interested in estimating the average but rather in estimating the maxima or the minima. For example, in designing a dam, engineers would not be interested in the average flood, but in the maximum flood. Farmers would be interested in both the maximum (which cause flooding) and minimum (which cause drought) floods.

The maxima or minima are called the extremes. The knowledge of the distributions of the extremes of the relevant phenomena is important. Additionally, estimating extreme quantities is very difficult because of the lack of available data. This is an expository talk in which the commonly used distributions for modelling extremes and the various methods for estimating their parameters and quantiles will be reviewed. Special attention will be given to recent literature.