Miguel Nakamura (CIMAT-CONACYT)
Understanding the behavior of biological extinction over geological time is extremely relevant. Namely, considerable debate has ensued in regard to the notion of humans being a significant factor of change in regard to natural, historical extinction rates, and if we are currently in the midst of a new massive extinction on Earth. A marine fossil record data set has been compiled, and it has indeed been used to address questions on the variation of extinction rate. We discuss the modeling of this data under statistical thinking: there is a probabilistic description of data at hand, and there is uncertainty associated with inference regarding the historical extinction rates. It will be shown that apart from the parameter of interest—biological extinction—there are a few nuisance parameters at play introduced by parallel processes that participate in data production. It thus appears that further information is necessary in order to extract precise inferences about extinction. This is work developed in Pedro Orozco’s Master’s degree thesis, 2016.
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