Being in Bristol for the Julian Besag memorial, I have not enough of a broadband in the hotel to update the ‘Og, even with pre-written entries. (Here is
the picture of the Clifton suspension bridge I took this morning while running.) So there will be no further entry today!
Archive for Julian Besag
No post today my eth0 is faraway…
Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel with tags Bristol, Clifton, Julian Besag on April 2, 2011 by xi'anA short history of MCMC [slides]
Posted in Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Bristol, Gibbs sampling, Hammersley-Clifford theorem, Julian Besag, MCMC on April 1, 2011 by xi'an
For the Julian Besag memorial at the University of Bristol next Saturday, I will give a talk on our Short history of MCMC paper with George. Here are the current slides, feel free to comment, I may still have time to add items:
Julian Besag memorial
Posted in Statistics, University life with tags Bristol, Julian Besag, MCMC, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods on February 17, 2011 by xi'an
On April 1 and 2, there will be a memorial and a symposium in memory of Julian Besag in Bristol, organised by Peter Green and Peter Diggle. The details are given on the symposium webpage. I will give a talk on the Saturday afternoon, talk related with our History of MCMC paper and emphasising the role of Julian in the developments of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods.
Death sequence
Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags Andrew Gelman, Arnold Zellner, generalised linear models, GLIM, ISBA, John Nelder, Julian Besag, Peter McCullagh, Sid Chib, Valencia conferences on August 22, 2010 by xi'anAugust is not looking kindly at statisticians as I have now learned (after ten days of disconnection) of both Arnold Zellner and John Nelder passing away, on Aug. 11 and 15, respectively. Following this close the death of Julian Besag, this is a sad series of departures of leading figures in the fields of statistics and econometrics. Arnold was 83 and, although I had met him in several Valencia meetings—including one in Alicante where we sat together for breakfast with Persi Diaconis and where an irate [and well-known ] statistician came to Arnold demanding apologies about comments made late the night before!—, I only had true interactions with him during the past years, over the Jeffreys reassessment I conducted with Judith Rousseau and Nicolas Chopin. On this occasion, Arnold was very kindly helpful, pointing out the volume that he had edited on Jeffreys and that I overlooked, discussing more philosophical points about the early part of Theory of Probability, and making a very nice overview of it at the O’Bayes 09 meeting. Always in the kindest manner. Sid Chib wrote an obituary of Arnold Zellner on the ISBA website (Arnold was the first ISBA president). Andrew Gelman also wrote some personal recollections about Arnold. A memorial site has been set up in his honour.
John Nelder was regularly attending the Read Paper sessions at the RSS and these are the only times I met him. He was an impressive figure in many ways, first and foremost for his monumental Generalised Linear Models with Peter McCullagh, a (difficult and uncompromising) book that I strongly recommend to (i.e. force upon!) my PhD students for its depth. I also remember being quite intimidated the first time I talked with him, failing to understand his arguments so completely that I dreaded later discussions… John Nelder was at Fisher’s Rothamsted Experimental Station for most of his career and was certainly one of the last genuine Fisherians (despite a fairly rude letter of Fisher to him!).
Julian Besag 1945-2010
Posted in Books, R, Statistics, University life with tags Bath, Bristol, Hammersley-Clifford theorem, Julian Besag, MCMC, spatial statistics on August 7, 2010 by xi'an
I have just learned that Julian Besag passed away last morning in Bristol after being admitted to the hospital two weeks ago. He was a leading figure of our field, a fiercely independent thinker, a brilliant statistician, and undoubtedly the clearest pretendent to having fathered MCMC. His influence on the field of spatial statistics will be felt for years, but he will be sorely missed… My first meeting with Julian was in 1993 in Laramie, Wyoming, and my last memory of him will be this visit George Casella and I made to Bath and Bristol in October 2008, and where Julian attended both of our talks as well as the dinner in Bath and the after-seminar beer in Bristol… He will be missed.
