The first full day of talks at ISBA 2014, Cancún, was full of goodies, from the three early talks on specifically developed software, including one by Daniel Lee on STAN that completed the one given by Bob Carpenter a few weeks ago in Paris (which gives me the opportunity to advertise STAN tee-shirts!). To the poster session (which just started a wee bit late for my conference sleep pattern!). Sylvia Richardson gave an impressive lecture full of information on Bayesian genomics. I also enjoyed very much two sessions with young Bayesian statisticians, one on Bayesian econometrics and the other one more diverse and sponsored by ISBA. Overall, and this also applies to the programme of the following days, I found that the proportion of non-parametric talks was quite high this year, possibly signalling a switch in the community and the interest of Bayesians. And conversely very few talks on computing related issues. (With most scheduled after my early departure…)
In the first of those sessions, Brendan Kline talked about partially identified parameters, a topic quite close to my interests, although I did not buy the overall modelling adopted in the analysis. For instance, Brendan Kline presented the example of a parameter θ that is the expectation of a random variable Y which is indirectly observed through x <Y< x̅ . While he maintained that inference should be restricted to an interval around θ and that using a prior on θ was doomed to fail (and against econometrics culture), I would have prefered to see this example as a missing data one, with both x and x̅ containing information about θ. And somewhat object to the argument against the prior as it would equally apply to any prior modelling. Although unrelated in the themes, Angela Bitto presented a work on the impact of different prior modellings on the estimation of time-varying parameters in time-series models. À la Harrison and West 1994 Discriminating between good and poor shrinkage in a way I could not spot. Unless it was based on the data fit (horror!). And a third talk of interest by Andriy Norets that (very loosely) related to Angela’s talk by presenting a framework to modify credible sets towards frequentist properties: one example was the credible interval on a positive normal mean that led to a frequency-valid confidence interval with a modified prior. This reminded me very much of the shrinkage confidence intervals of the James-Stein era.
The starting dinner happened to coincide with the (second) ISBA Fellow Award ceremony. Jim acted as the grand master of ceremony and he did great to add life and side stories to the written nominations for each and everyone of the new Fellows. The Fellowships honoured Bayesian statisticians who had contributed to the field as researchers and to the society since its creation. I thus feel very honoured (and absolutely undeserving) to be included in this prestigious list, along with many friends. (But would have loved to see two more former ISBA presidents included, esp. for their massive contribution to Bayesian theory and methodology…) And also glad to wear regular glasses instead of my morning sunglasses.
