After ABC in Paris in 2009, ABC in London in 2011, and ABC in Roma last year, things are accelerating since there will be—as I just learned— an ABC in Sydney next July (not June as I originally typed, thanks Robin!). The workshop on the current developments of ABC methodology thus leaves Europe to go down-under and to take advantage of the IMS Meeting in Sydney on July 7-10, 2014. Hopefully, “ABC in…” will continue its tour of European capitals in 2015! To keep up with an unbroken sequence of free workshops, Scott Sisson has managed to find support so that attendance is free of charge (free as in “no registration fee at all”!) but you do need to register as space is limited. While I would love to visit UNSW and Sydney once again and attend the workshop, I will not, getting ready for Cancún and our ABC short course there.
Archive for Cancún
ABC in Sydney, July 3-4, 2014!!!
Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life, Wines with tags ABC, ABC in London, ABC in Paris, ABC in Rome, abc-in-sydney, Australia, Cancún, IMS, ISBA, simulation, Sydney, Sydney Harbour, Sydney Opera, UNSW, workshop on February 12, 2014 by xi'anCancun, register before Feb. 15!
Posted in Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Cancún, ISBA 2014, ISBA 2016, Mexico, registration fees, University of Edinburgh on February 10, 2014 by xi'an
Early bird registration for the ISBA 2014 World Meeting in Cancún, México, ends up on Feb. 14. Since the fees are already astronomical ($410 for ISBA students and $510 for other ISBA members), it is definitely worth to register now. (As debated in an earlier post, I am opposed to the steep inflation in conference fees and do not buy the argument of the all-included package. This is certainly most convenient for the conference organisers or treasurers, but I do not want to pay for meals I will not enjoy [and in some cases not even take]. Especially when the cost is multiplied by 5 since four of my PhD students will travel to Cancún as well. Whoever is building a proposal for ISBA 2016, please bear that in mind! As we will when making our proposal for ISBA 2018 in Edinburgh.)
ABC…ancun, July 13, 2014
Posted in Statistics, Travel, University life with tags ABC, Cancún, conference, deadline, ISBA, ISBA sections, logo, Mexico, objective Bayes, short courses, Valencia conferences, Yucatan on November 15, 2013 by xi'an
We received the good news from the Program Committee of the next ISBA World meeting in Cancún, Quintana Roo, México, that our proposal of a short course on ABC methods was accepted. So, along with Jean-Michel Marin, I hope to introduce ABC to a large group of interested participants on either July 13 or the morn of July 14. Here is the abstract for the short course
ABC appeared in 1999 to solve complex genetic problems where the likelihood of the model was impossible to compute. They are now a standard tool in the statistical genetic community but have also addressed many other problems where likelihood computation was also an issue, including dynamic models in signal processing and financial data analysis. However, these methods suffer to some degree from calibration difficulties that make them rather volatile in their implementation and thus render them suspicious to the users of more traditional Monte Carlo methods. Nonetheless, ABC techniques have several claims to validity: first, they are connected with econometric methods like indirect inference. Second, they can be expressed in terms of various non-parametric estimators of the likelihood or of the posterior density and follow standard convergence patterns. At last, they appear as regular Bayesian inference over noisy data. The lectures cover those validation steps but also detail the different implementations of ABC algorithms and the calibration of their parameters. The second part of the course illustrates those issues in the special case of the coalescent model used in population genetics, where many of the early advances of ABC were first implemented.
and the complete description is available on the ISBA website.
In addition, the special ISBA section sessions for BayesComp and O’Bayes ISBA sections have been accepted too. (As well as sessions for most of the other ISBA sections.) Thanks to Raquel Prado and to the whole scientific committee for working hard towards another successful ISBA World meeting! Note that the early bird conference registration begins today, so make sure to book your seat for Cancun!
Cancun, July 14-18, 2014
Posted in Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Cancún, conference, deadline, ISBA, logo, Mexico, Valencia conferences, Yucatan on October 4, 2013 by xi'anThe next ISBA World meeting will take place in Cancún, Quintana Roo, in México. (To keep up with the Valencia meeting tradition, it is again in a resort town, after the welcome parenthesis of Kyoto 2012! I just hope the mountains are not that far…) There will be a series of short courses on July 13 (maybe including an ABC course…) and the talks will start for good on July 14. Our BayesComp and O’Bayes ISBA sections will hopefully have special invited sessions, Deadline for short courses and special sessions proposals is October 15, just like the deadlines for MCMCSki 4. (The logo is very nice, even though I do not get the meaning of the sequence 13-0-1-10-10: 13 would work for the 13th ISBA/Valencia meeting [already?!] but the other figures…!?)
Update: for some strange (Mayan?) malediction, Sophie Donnet and Michael Stumpf both tried (thanks!) to comment on that post and failed. They were both telling me that this is the date of the French National (Bastille) Day in the Maya (Long Count) calendar…. I thus got 13 completely wrong as it is read from right to left: 10th day (k’in) of the 20 day month (winal), 10th winal of the 18 months year (k’atun), first k’atun of the 20 k’atuns cycle named a b’ak’tun, final b’ak’tun of the 20 b’ak’tun cycle called piktun, and 13th piktun of the 20 piktun cycle called kalabtun… (Yes, Mayas used the base-20 count.) The calendar started on Sept. 11, in 3114 BC.
