Carlos Alberto de Bragança Pereira

Carlos Alberto de Bragança Pereira (born July 1, 1946) is a statistican and emeritus Brazilian professor of the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of São Paulo's Statistics Department. He searches in the fields of statistics, genetics and bioinformatics, specially in bayesian inference, where he became a pioneer in the global south.

Pereira, nicknamed as Carlinhos, is the first person with a master's degree in Statistics from the University of São Paulo. He had holded the position of the dean of the Institute between 1994 and 1998. Pereira holds a PhD from the Florida State University.

Academic formation Pereira graduated in Statistics from ENCE in 1968. Then, Carlos Alberto Barbosa Dantas invited him to a master's program at USP. On June 3, 1971, Bragança Pereira obtained his master's degree with the thesis Estimativa da probabilidade a priori em um problema de classificação.

This way, Carlos Pereira became the first master in Statistics from USP. He defended his doctoral thesis Bayesian Solutions to Some Classical Problems in Statistics, supervised by Debabrata Basu, in 1980.

Associação Brasileira de Estatística The Associação Brasileira de Estatística (ABE), created in 1984, has the goal of expand the viability and opportunities of the statistics in Brazil, promoting bulletins and organizing mettings. Pereir was its third president, serving from 1988 to 1990.

As translator With Wagner de Souza Borges, Pereira translated the David Blackwell book Basic Statistics , which is considerated by Carlinhos the most interest elementar book to discuss bayesian statistics.

He is member of the Conselho Científico da Associação Brasileira de Jurimetria and the Conselho Regional de Estatística da 3º Região (Conre3). Pereira is also a researcher in projects of São Paulo Research Foundation and consultant of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development and Coordenação de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior. Also with Julio Stern, Pereira developed the Full Bayesian Significance Test, which is a measure of accuracy for hypotheses.

Pereira also made analysis of the elections system in 2016 and executed simulations and calculated the possible number of cases and deaths by COVID-19 during the pandemic in Brazil.

Recognition and impact In 1981, Pereira received the Ralph A. Bradley Student Award, which is presented to a doctoral student of the University of Florida. The student receives a sign with their name at the Frank Wilcoxon Memorial Reading Room.

The Brazil Top 10000 Scientists AD Scientific Index 2023, through criteria such as scientific performance and value to scientific production, ranked Carlos Pereira in the position 691 as Brazilian researcher and 212 as a University of São Paulo researcher in 2023. The Latin America Top 10000 Scientists AD Scientific Index 2023 ranked him in the position 206 among the USP researchers and holded the position 938 as a Latin American researcher.

Pereira hold the Emeritus title from the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of São Paulo. The ceremony was hold on 22 May 2025.

Selected publications

1983: A Note on Blackwell Sufficiency and a Skibinsky Characterization of Distributions. 1988: Current status of cytogenetic procedures to detect and quantify previous exposures to radiation. 1999: Evidence and Credibility: Full Bayesian Significance Test for Precise Hypotheses. 2006: Meta-analysis of femoropopliteal bypass grafts for lower extremity arterial insufficiency. 2006: Validation of the Brazilian version of the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ). 2019: Prevalence of low back pain in the elderly population: a systematic review.