Archive for climbing

approximately Bayes [on Skye]

Posted in Mountains, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 28, 2026 by xi'an

Wow, what an exciting workshop in an equally exciting place! Strong themes were post-Bayes (Gibbs priors, martingale priors, predictive Bayes, &tc.) and deep neural network modelling. With animated discussions allowed by the free windows planned in the program. And the very early dinner at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig that let a long sunlit evening for impromptu Q&A’s [with a serving of lamb and another of haggis pie!]. Making me realise the large corpus of work I had missed in the past years on these topics, even though the satellite of BayesComp last year was already an eye opener. (Stay tuned for news about BayesComp 2027 & its mirror in Aussois!) The proposal in Jeff Miller’s discussion of Jeremias Knoblauch’s overview of post-Bayes [I’d rather favour another name!]  to consider directly likelihood values as the data was particularly appealing to me, while reminding me of the foundations of nested sampling. (Hopefully, a new perspective on uncertainty assessment for nested sampling is soon to be completed!)

On the non-academic side, the long days in The North helped with my running with above 90km bagged in the week (and no downpour on the runs). But little to my swimming since the water was cold enough to limit my laps to 5mn each time! Paradoxically the worst day was the one I chose for climbing the Inaccessible Pinnacle (as expanded in another ‘Og entry).

Rumpe Cuou, Sormiou, in an electricity ad

Posted in Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 15, 2025 by xi'an

Mountain Queen

Posted in Kids, Mountains, pictures with tags , , , , , , , , on September 9, 2024 by xi'an

geometric climbing

Posted in Mountains, pictures with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 5, 2021 by xi'an

On the qualifying round for the Tokyo Olympics, the French climber Mickaël Mawem ended up first, while his brother Bassa was the fastest on the speed climb (as a 2018 and 2019 World Champion) but ruptured a tendon while lead climbing and had to be flown back to Paris for a operation. The New York Times inappropriately and condescendingly qualified this first position as being “unexpected” when Mickaël is the 2019 European Champion in bouldering… The NYT is piling up in its belittling by stating that “Anouck Jaubert of France used a second-place finish in speed to squeak into the final¨… (The other French female climber did not make it, despite being one of the first women to reach the 9b level.)

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!)

marijua…what?!

Posted in pictures, Running with tags , , , , , , , on July 28, 2021 by xi'an

I was completely flabbergasted to hear about the suspension of the fastest US sprinter, Sha’Carri Richardson (10.75 in the 100m!), from the Olympic Games in Tokyo for smoking marijuana. In a US State where such smoking is legal… It happens that marijuana is on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) list of prohibited substances. And that one of the reasons is that its “use violates the spirit of the sport”, which sounds particularly absurd. And sooo patronising, when the WADA mentions that it is not “consistent with the athlete as a role model for young people around the world.” Considering that alcohol, caffeine, tobacco are not prohibited at all… (Plus, it is quite dubious that marijuana would have a positive impact on running performances.) A few days later, I found out that in 2001 the legendary Chris Sharma had been disqualified from the bouldering World Cup after testing positive for THC….