Archive for bagpipes
off to Caen for the Pegasus half-marathon [39th edition]
Posted in Statistics with tags 21.1km, bagpipes, Battle of Normandy, Caen, Courants de la Liberté, D Day, half-marathon, La Rochambelle, Normandy Running Festival, Orne, Pegasus bridge on June 6, 2026 by xi'an
Pìobaireachd Nan Eun [Brìghde Chaimbeul]
Posted in Mountains, Travel with tags bagpipes, Brìghde Chaimbeul, folklore, Gaelic, Gaelic singing, Scotland, Scottish Gaelic, Scottish Highlands, Skye, smallpipes, uilleann pipes, Western Isles, youtube on August 11, 2025 by xi'an
Pegasus bridge half marathon [1:26:26, 114/5227, 1/109 M5M and first over 55]
Posted in pictures, Running, Travel with tags 1000 years, bagpipes, Caen, Courir en Normandie, D Day, glider, Hoka One One, Les Courants de la Liberté, M5M, Malherbe, Normandie, Normandy, Pegasus bridge, road race, WW II on June 22, 2025 by xi'an
Tough race when compared with last year despite good weather conditions (if quite warm), and bagpipes at the start, maybe due to overtraining. I barely managed to keep my first position in the M5M category, by a mere 2s, not that I was aware of the threat to my crown! The briefly leased Hoka One One shoes did not particularly help this time (or maybe they did!). This was my last half marathon in the M5M category (if my first race on invitation) and I am thus glad I could end up on a winning note, if not on a podium since only scratch winners are rewarded that way. Hopefully, I will get re-invited for next year.
Colin Blyth (1922-2019)
Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags bagpipes, C.R. Rao, caligraphy, Canada, Colin Blyth, decision theory, discussion paper, Erich Lehmann, IMS Bulletin, JASA, La Trobe University, Lucien Le Cam, Melbourne, obituary, Ontario, Pitman nearness, Simpson's paradox, transitivity on March 19, 2020 by xi'an
While reading the IMS Bulletin (of March 2020), I found out that Canadian statistician Colin Blyth had died last summer. While we had never met in person, I remember his very distinctive and elegant handwriting in a few letters he sent me, including the above I have kept (along with an handwritten letter from Lucien Le Cam!). It contains suggestions about revising our Is Pitman nearness a reasonable criterion?, written with Gene Hwang and William Strawderman and which took three years to publish as it was deemed somewhat controversial. It actually appeared in JASA with discussions from Malay Ghosh, John Keating and Pranab K Sen, Shyamal Das Peddada, C. R. Rao, George Casella and Martin T. Wells, and Colin R. Blyth (with a much stronger wording than in the above letter!, like “What can be said but “It isn’t I, it’s you that are crazy?”). While I had used some of his admissibility results, including the admissibility of the Normal sample average in dimension one, e.g. in my book, I had not realised at the time that Blyth was (a) the first student of Erich Lehmann (b) the originator of [the name] Simpson’s paradox, (c) the scribe for Lehmann’s notes that would eventually lead to Testing Statistical Hypotheses and Theory of Point Estimation, later revised with George Casella. And (d) a keen bagpipe player and scholar.
