MCMC Methods in Animal Breeding: A Primer

Catalog description

The goal of this course is to introduce computational techniques based on simulation that have become a staple in the field of animal breeding (and beyond) over the last 20 years. An overview of the most popular Monte Carlo methods will be provided to the students with an emphasis on hands on reproducible examples developed through the R software. Minimal exposure to the R programming language will be required while no previous exposure to Monte Carlo methods is required. While a few examples in the class will be set in a Bayesian framework, no previous exposure to Bayesian statistics is required