Charles F. Manski and Aleksey Tetenov Masterclass

Statistical decision theory, developed by Wald (1950), provides a coherent frequentist framework for the use of finite-sample data to make decisions. Wald posed the task as choice of a statistical decision function, which maps potentially available data into a choice among the feasible actions. Statistical decision theory has great generality in principle and considerable potential usefulness in practice. This masterclass discusses recent applications to treatment choice and point prediction with sample data. The lectures cover both procedures for use of existing sample data and approaches to choosing sample designs.