Join our workshop on Spatial modelling with GAMs in R, which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series! 

Here’s some more info: 

Title: Spatial modelling with GAMs in R

Date: Thursday, October 31st, 18:00 – 20:00 CEST (Rome, Berlin, Paris timezone) 

Speaker: Sophie Lee is a statistician and educator who teaches a range of statistics and R coding courses to non-statisticians. Her goal is to provide accessible, engaging training to prove that statistics does not need to be scary! She has a PhD in Spatio-temporal Epidemiology from LSHTM and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her research interests lie in spatial data analysis, planetary health, and Bayesian modelling.

Description: When modelling spatial data we are generally unable to use traditional modelling approaches, such as generalised linear models (GLMs), as the assumption that observations are independent of one another may be invalid. This is due to underlying similarities, including unobservable behaviours, climate, and other characteristics, that are shared between observations close to one another. There are extensions of GLMs that can be used to overcome this lack of independence between observations, often with the inclusion of structured random effects, that try to take account of the underlying spatial relationships. The issue arises when deciding how to structure these spatial random effects: how close is close enough to consider observations no longer independent?

This workshop introduces generalised additive models (GAMs) as a method for generating the underlying spatial structure needed to define spatially structured random effects. We will see how penalised smoothing splines can be applied to coordinates to generate a spatial plane with minimal user assumptions. This ensures the spatial model is relevant and unique to the setting being studied. Using the mgcv package in R, we will apply this approach to real-world data, incorporating the flexible spatial structure into a random effects model, which then can be interpreted similarly to any other spatial model.

Minimal registration fee: 20 euro (or 20 USD or 800 UAH)

Please note that the registration confirmation email will be sent 1 day before the workshop.

How can I register?

• Go to https://bit.ly/3wvwMA6 or https://bit.ly/4aD5LMC  or  https://bit.ly/3PFxtNA and donate at least 20 euro. Feel free to donate more if you can, all proceeds go directly to support Ukraine.

• Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

• Fill in the registration form, attaching a screenshot of a donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after donation).

If you are not personally interested in attending, you can also contribute by sponsoring a participation of a student, who will then be able to participate for free. If you choose to sponsor a student, all proceeds will also go directly to organisations working in Ukraine. You can either sponsor a particular student or you can leave it up to us so that we can allocate the sponsored place to students who have signed up for the waiting list.

How can I sponsor a student?

• Go to https://bit.ly/3wvwMA6 or https://bit.ly/4aD5LMC  or https://bit.ly/3PFxtNA and donate at least 20 euro (or 17 GBP or 20 USD or 800 UAH). Feel free to donate more if you can, all proceeds go to support Ukraine!

• Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

• Fill in the sponsorship form, attaching the screenshot of the donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after the donation). You can indicate whether you want to sponsor a particular student or we can allocate this spot ourselves to the students from the waiting list. You can also indicate whether you prefer us to prioritize students from developing countries when assigning place(s) that you sponsored.

If you are a university student and cannot afford the registration fee, you can also sign up for the waiting list here. (Note that you are not guaranteed to participate by signing up for the waiting list).

You can also find more information about this workshop series,  a schedule of our future workshops as well as a list of our past workshops which you can get the recordings & materials here.

Looking forward to seeing you during the workshop!

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Spatial modelling with GAMs in R workshop was first posted on September 30, 2024 at 3:34 pm.