Assistant Professor
College of Letters and Sciences | Department of Statistics
Hometown: Dallas, TX
Sameer is an Assistant Professor in Statistics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research interests include Bayesian hierarchical modeling, Bayesian treed regression, variable selection, and causal inference. Much of his methodological work is motivated by an interest in understanding the long-term health consequences of playing American-style tackle football. In his sparse time, he enjoys cooking, making cocktails, photography, and cheering for Dallas-area sports teams.
Talks:
Estimating the Health Consequence of Playing Youth Sports
I will discuss several studies that attempt to elucidate the short- and long-term health consequences of playing youth sports, including American-style tackle football. I specifically focus on how careful study design and innovative statistical methods can help overcome some of the fundamental scientific challenges.
Quantifying the value of pitch framing in baseball.
Can catchers influence umpire decision-making and turn balls into strikes? And if so, how much should teams value catchers with elite pitch framing abilities? I will discuss how we can quantify the uncertainty about pitch framing’s value as well as players’ and umpires’ decision-making using high-resolution pitch tracking data.