Archive for Brazil
un lagarto en las Cataratas del Iguazú [guest jatp]
Posted in Kids, pictures, Travel with tags Argentina, Brazil, Cataratas del Iguazú, Iguazú Falls, jatp, lizards on January 10, 2017 by xi'an
wildlife photograph of the year [2015]
Posted in pictures with tags Brazil, ibis, The Guardian, wildlife photography on October 17, 2015 by xi'an
Judith Rousseau gets Bernoulli Society Ethel Newbold Prize
Posted in Books, Kids, Statistics, University life with tags Bayesian non-parametrics, Bernoulli society, Brazil, Cambridge University, compound Poisson distribution, England, Ethel Newbold, Guy Medal, industrial statistics, ISI, Medical Research Council, Rio de Janeiro, Royal Statistical Society, Turnbridge Wells on July 31, 2015 by xi'an
As announced at the 60th ISI World Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, my friend, co-author, and former PhD student Judith Rousseau got the first Ethel Newbold Prize! Congrats, Judith! And well-deserved! The prize is awarded by the Bernoulli Society on the following basis
The Ethel Newbold Prize is to be awarded biannually to an outstanding statistical scientist for a body of work that represents excellence in research in mathematical statistics, and/or excellence in research that links developments in a substantive field to new advances in statistics. In any year in which the award is due, the prize will not be awarded unless the set of all nominations includes candidates from both genders.
and is funded by Wiley. I support very much this (inclusive) approach of “recognizing the importance of women in statistics”, without creating a prize restricted to women nominees (and hence exclusive). Thanks to the members of the Program Committee of the Bernoulli Society for setting that prize and to Nancy Reid in particular.
Ethel Newbold was a British statistician who worked during WWI in the Ministry of Munitions and then became a member of the newly created Medical Research Council, working on medical and industrial studies. She was the first woman to receive the Guy Medal in Silver in 1928. Just to stress that much remains to be done towards gender balance, the second and last woman to get a Guy Medal in Silver is Sylvia Richardson, in 2009… (In addition, Valerie Isham, Nicky Best, and Fiona Steele got a Guy Medal in Bronze, out of the 71 so far awarded, while no woman ever got a Guy Medal in Gold.) Funny occurrences of coincidence: Ethel May Newbold was educated at Tunbridge Wells, the place where Bayes was a minister, while Sylvia is now head of the Medical Research Council biostatistics unit in Cambridge.
Introduction to Monte Carlo methods with R and Bayesian Essentials with R
Posted in Books, R, Statistics, University life with tags Bayesian Essentials with R, book sales, Brazil, copyright, Introduction to Monte Carlo Methods with R, Saudi Arabia, Springer-Verlag on June 26, 2015 by xi'an
Here are the download figures for my e-book with George as sent to me last week by my publisher Springer-Verlag. With an interesting surge in the past year. Maybe simply due to new selling strategies of the published rather to a wider interest in the book. (My royalties have certainly not increased!) Anyway thanks to all readers. As an aside for wordpress wannabe bloggers, I realised it is now almost impossible to write tables with WordPress, another illustration of the move towards small-device-supported blogs. Along with a new annoying “simpler” (or more accurately dumber) interface and a default font far too small for my eyesight. So I advise alternatives to wordpress that are more sympathetic to maths contents (e.g., using MathJax) and comfortable editing.
And the same for the e-book with Jean-Michel, which only appeared in late 2013. And contains more chapters than Introduction to Monte Carlo methods with R. Incidentally, a reader recently pointed out to me the availability of a pirated version of The Bayesian Choice on a Saudi (religious) university website. And of a pirated version of Introducing Monte Carlo with R on a Saõ Paulo (Brazil) university website. This may be alas inevitable, given the diffusion by publishers of e-chapters that can be copied with no limitations…
published in Brazilian Journal of Probability and Statistics, esplêndido!
Posted in Statistics, University life with tags ABC, Brazil, Ising model, untractable normalizing constant, Wang-Landau algorithm on September 24, 2013 by xi'an
Our paper “Bayesian computation for statistical models with intractable normalizing constants” written with Yves Atchadé and Nicolas Lartillot has now appeared in the Brazilian Journal of Probability and Statistics! (This is my first paper in this journal.) Although we could have used ABC steps to approximate the posterior, we chose instead a Wang-Landau approach that has exact convergence properties and extends the 1992 Read Paper by Charlie Geyer and Elisabeth Thompson.
