Archive for Belgium

R’ousseeuw²⁶ prize!

Posted in R, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , on June 29, 2026 by xi'an

Great news that a major Statistics prize like the Rousseeuw Prize goes to the R Core Team, esp. Brian Ripley (University of Oxford), Martin Mächler (ETH Zürich), Kurt Hornik (WU Wien), Peter Dalgaard (Copenhagen Business School), and Luke Tierney (University of Iowa). R is indeed a unique phenomenon, where open-source and open-access has been developed by and for the statistics community. Which is about to release R version 4.6.1 (Happy Hop) version.

Thanks to the R Core Team (and congrats!). Half of the Prize goes to the other members of the Team.

“The international and independent jury, appointed by the King Baudouin Foundation, has recognised the groundbreaking work of five members of the R Core Team who have been awarded the Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics. The international award, which recognises major contributions to statistical research, honours their nearly three decades of unpaid work building R, the open-source language that has become the common foundation of modern statistical computing.

Statistics is everywhere. It determines whether a new medicine is safe enough to reach patients, monitors risk in financial markets, and tracks how diseases spread. R is the tool that made it accessible to everyone. The language that the R Core Team built is trusted by institutions including the US Food and Drug Administration, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and major pharmaceutical companies worldwide.”

happy Brussels sprouts day!

Posted in Kids, pictures with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 31, 2026 by xi'an

Data science ethics [book review]

Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 5, 2025 by xi'an

Data science ethics (concepts, techniques and cautionary tales), by David Martens, was published in 2022 by Oxford University Press. The book is inspired by the author’s  course on Data Science and ethics he has been teaching at the University of Antwerp. (With a link to his slides.) The 255p book proceeds by decomposing the ethics of data science into its different steps: data gathering (Chap. 2), data preprocessing (Chap. 3), modelling (Chap. 4), evaluation (Chap. 5), and deployment (Chap. 6). Following the `FAT Flow Framework´, where FAT stands for fairness, accountability, and transparency.

Do not expect much maths, stats, or anything quantitative: this book is mostly about concepts, even though some (mostly well-known) illustrations are provided. Chapter 2 includes a description of encryption (with homomorphic encryption treated in Chapter 4). And somewhat improbably quantum computing. Differential privacy gets a few pages with not a single formula (until Chapter 4, again).

Chapter 3 covers k-anonymity, record linkage, reidentification, (through cautionary tales) and discrimination through biases in the (learning) dataset.  Chapter 4 is defining ε differential privacy with the Laplace randomization as a possible implementation and with no critical stance on the limitations of the concept. The computation limitations of homomorphic encryption are more clearly pointed out. Federated learning is only quickly mentioned. The section about measuring fairness and reducing bias implies that some prior knowledge is available about whom is potentially discriminated and which covariates to add to the model. The last section on explicability of predictions is worthwhile in signalling the difficulty with most (black box) AI but the example opposing an SVM model to a logistic model is not tremendously convincing in that neither model is true.

Chapter 5 addresses the crucial challenge of ethical evaluation in a rather verbose and vague manner. For instance, with no instruction on how to resist adversarial attacks. Or criticising p-hacking and multiple testing while missing the elephant in the room (p-values!). Drifting from the topic when discussing the misdeeds of Diederik Stapel. Most of the same goes about Chapter 6 and its take on ethical deployment, when going through examples such as Google’s policies in China. Or general musing on the impact of AI on societal inequalities (with mentions of companies and CEOs who have since then back-pedalled on their ethical engagement). These chapters are lacking in tools and (more) practical recommendations.

One interesting aspect of the book is the attention paid to the EU(ropean) aspect of these concerns, through the GDPR (General DAta Protection Regulations) adopted by the European Parliament in 2016. (There is also a brief mention of China’s regulations, but no details beyond a reference. Maybe the Chinese edition differs.)

The 7th Annual PrivaCI Symposium, 19-20 May, Brussels

Posted in pictures, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 24, 2025 by xi'an

2024 ERC Starting Grants announced

Posted in Kids, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 22, 2024 by xi'an

Today the European Research Council (ERC) has made public which Starting Grants proposals were selected this year, for a total amount of €780m. Congrats to all recipients!These include 14 grants for the PE1 panel in which I sat earlier this year for the fourth and final time. (The PE1 panel stands within the Physical Sciences and Engineering domain and covers pure maths, applied maths, mathematical foundations of computer science, mathematical physics, and statistics.) I have found the whole experience highly interesting, from getting a snapshot of on-going directions in the broad field (for topics I could understand) to interacting constructively with colleagues from different fields and cultures, to appreciating the clear protocols and instructions provided by the ERC and its highly efficient officers, if representing a significant time investment over these years.
This round of selections saw the return of UK applications, following the long-delayed agreement between the EU and the UK, with Warwick Thomas Berrett’s proposal among the winners. (Whose evaluation I obviously took no part whatsoever, following ERC rules governing conflicts of interest. Ditto for applications from PSL.)