Abstract
In this talk, I will begin with a very personal view of David Blackwell's contributions to science and society, especially how Blackwell has influenced me as a scholar and Black man in a quantitative field. Next, I will discuss the Blackwell-Rao Theorem (1945, 1947) and the optimality of sufficient statistics in terms of mean-squared-error. Finally, I will show connections to private statistical prediction and uncertainty quantification.