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The Harvard Center Shanghai organized a talk and reception with Professor Xiao-Li Meng, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, on January 23, 2015. Professor Meng delivered a presentation entitled “Personalized Treatment: Sounds heavenly, but where on Earth did they find the right guinea pig for me?”
Big data have promoted many advances, or at least our desire for them, such as personalized treatment in medicine, education, marketing, etc. But how big are the data to show that the promised treatment actually has worked for someone exactly like me? OK, no one should take “personalized” literally. But then how impersonalized can a treatment be while still being labeled scientifically as personalized? This talk invited the audience to consider such questions from a statistical perspective, while along the way revealing a prevailing statistical trap-the Simpson’s Paradox-and how it has misled us in making our professional decisions and personal choices. The talk is also a showcase of a Gen Ed Course at Harvard: Real-Life Statistics: Your Chance for Happiness (or Misery), as well as Harvard’s leadership in Ph.D. education: Graduate Seminar for Undergraduate Education.
