I just learned that Paul Deheuvels died last week. He was head of the statistics department at Université Pierre & Marie Curie when I was a lecturer there (1987-1992). And a professor of statistics and probability there for his entire career, from 1974 to 2013. While we were working on completely different topics, and had divergent political views, we kept an amicable connection throughout the years, as we were living close enough to meet once in a while at the local farmers’ market and have a quick chat. When I was considering my options for pursuing a PhD, while writing a Master thesis on commutative Lie algebras with his father, René Deheuvels, he was one of the people who offered to supervise me (on a topic related with empirical processes, which were his forte). Later, he suggested I wrote a very short introduction to Bayesian statistics in the Que sais-je? collection (where he published three books) and, when my manuscript was found too theoretical, he proposed to publish an expanded version in the Economica collection, which ended up being the French version of The Bayesian Choice. I also remember a very kind email he sent me while I was recovering from my climbing accident, in 2013, as a fellow climber. (For a long while, he would drive to Fontainebleau once or twice a week for bouldering.) As alluded (to) above, Deheuvels’ political views were very conservative, with a proximity to the far-right Club de l’Horloge and a mix of vieille France traditionalism and libertarianism positions. For sure, he never was shy from embarking in controversies, from defending Allègre’s climato-scepticism to backing Séralini’s controversial study on the cancerogenic effects of Mosanto’s transgenic maize.
Archive for bouldering
Paul Deheuvels (1948-2026)
Posted in Books, Mountains, University life with tags Bayesian Choice, Bayesian statistics, Book, bouldering, Bourg-la-Reine, climatosceptic, climbing accident, Club de l'Horloge, Economica, empirical process, Fontainebleau, functional estimation, Jussieu, Monsanto, obituary, Paris, Paris 6, Paul Deheuvels, Que sais-je?, The Bayesian Choice, thumb, transgenic corn, UMPC, Université Pierre et Marie Curie on February 5, 2026 by xi'antaekwond’or [blue wave#11]
Posted in Kids, pictures, Running, Travel with tags bouldering, climbing wall, competition, France, gold medal, Grand Palais, handball, Paris, Paris 2024 Olympics, Paris 2024 Paralympics, Slovenia, taekwondo, volley, volleyball on August 12, 2024 by xi'an
no beach [blue wave#10]
Posted in Kids, pictures, Running, Travel with tags bouldering, climbing wall, competition, France, gold medal, handball, Paris, Paris 2024 Olympics, Slovenia, volley, volleyball on August 11, 2024 by xi'an
geometric climbing
Posted in Mountains, pictures with tags Adam Ondra, arithmetic mean, bouldering, climbing, climbing accident, geometric mean, lead climbing, NYT, something is wrong on the Internet, speed climbing, The New York Times, Tokyo 2021 Olympics, World champion on August 5, 2021 by xi'an
I remain puzzled by the whole concept of mixing the three sports together. As well as by the scoring system, based on a geometric average of the three rankings, which means in particular that the eight finalists will suffer less than in the qualifying round from a poor performance in one of the three climbs (as Adam Ondra for the speed climb). In addition, there is an obscure advantage coming to Adam Ondra for Bassa Mawem cancelling his participation: according to the NYT, “Ondra will receive a bye and an automatic slot in the speed semifinals” meaning “that a likely eighth-place finish in speed — a ranking number that can be hard to overcome in the multiplication of the combined format — will now be no worse than fourth for Ondra”. (The sentence on the strong impact due to the geometric mean is incorrect in that it has less impact that the arithmetic!)
IFSC 2020, Briançon [jatp]
Posted in Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel with tags 64 kcal/day, Adam Ondra, bouldering, Briançon, climbing wall, competition, COVID-19, French Alps, Hautes Alpes, IFSC Climbing World Cup, International Federation of Sport Climbing, jatp, on sight climb, pandemics, speed climbing, sport climbing on August 23, 2020 by xi'an
