Join our workshop on Good vs. Bad Confounders: A Hands-On Introduction with DAGs & Simulations in R, which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series! 

Here’s some more info: 

Title: Good vs. Bad Confounders: A Hands-On Introduction with DAGs & Simulations in R

Date: Thursday, July 17th, 18:00 – 20:00 CEST (Rome, Berlin, Paris timezone)

Speaker: Dr Angelo D’Ambrosio, MD, is a Public Health specialist at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, working on Antimicrobial Resistance & Healthcare-Associated-Infection surveillance. Angelo is also a PhD candidate in infectious-disease modelling at the University of Freiburg, Germany. His expertise covers stastical and epidemiologica modelling, data science and machine learning, and public health surveillance. His research blends causal inference, Bayesian modelling, network science and, recently, AI applied to public health topics. He is a contributor of the R open-source community and maintains a number of packages spanning from research synthesis automatisation, research utilities, data pipelines, and also packages to communicate or use LLMs for various tasks.

Description: In causal inference, knowing which variables to adjust for can mean the difference between better defining a true causal effect and introducing new bias. In this workshop we’ll take a practical tour of Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) and how to use them to discover both “good” and “bad” control variables. Starting from a minimal DAG drawn with the {ggdag} package, we will (1) differentiate confounderes, mediators, colliders, etc… and also more complex scenarios, (2) generate synthetic data based on generative model equations, and (3) compare the effect of controlling or non controlling for certain variables. Along the way we will see what is a confounder and especially what is NOT a confounder, why adjusting for covariates sometimes amplify bias instead of reducing it, how sample size, noise and the adjustment set affects precision, and how simulation can validate modelling choices before we even touch real data. The session is beginner-friendly for anyone who already knows basic R syntax (tidyverse exposure, e.g. dplyr and ggplot2, helps).

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

Please note that the registration confirmation is sent 1 day before the workshop to all registered participants rather than immediately after registration

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!