Archive for Luminy

ISBA 2021.1

Posted in Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life, Wines with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 29, 2021 by xi'an

An infinite (mixture) session was truly the first one I could attend on Day 1, as a heap of unexpected last minute issues kept me busy or on hedge for the beginning of the day (if not preventing me from a dawn dip in Calanque de Morgiou). Using the CIRM video system for zoom talked required more preparation than I had thought and we made it barely in time for the first session, while I had to store zoom links for all speakers present in Luminy.  Plus allocate sessions to the rooms provided by CIRM, twice since there was a mishap with the other workshop present at CIRM. And reassuring speakers, made anxious by the absence of a clear schedule. Chairing the second ABC session was also a tense moment, from checking every speaker could connect and share slides, to ensuring they kept on schedule (and they did on both!, ta’), to checking for questions at the end. Spotting a possible connection between Takuo Mastubara’s Stein’s approximation for in the ABC setup and a related paper by Liu and Lee I had read just a few days ago. Alas, it was too early to relax as an inverter in the CIRM room burned and led to a local power failure. Fortunately this was restored prior to the mixture session! (As several boars were spotted on the campus yesternight, I hope no tragic encounter happens before the end of the meeting!!!) So the mixture session proposed new visions on infering K, the number of components, some of which reminded me of… my first talk at CIRM where I was trying to get rid of empty components at each MCMC step, albeit in a much more rudimentary way obviously. And later had the wonderful surprise of hearing Xiao-Li’s lecture start by an excerpt from Car Talk, the hilarious Sunday morning radio talk-show about the art of used car maintenance on National Public Radio (NPR) that George Casella could not miss (and where a letter he wrote them about a mistaken probability computation was mentioned!). The final session of the day was an invited ABC session I chaired (after being exfiltrated from the CIRM dinner table!) with Kate Lee, Ryan Giordano, and Julien Stoehr as speakers. Besides Julien’s talk on our Gibbs-ABC paper, both other talks shared a concern with the frequentist properties of the ABC posterior, either to be used as a control tool or as a faster assessment of the variability of the (Monte Carlo) ABC output.

off to Luminy!!!

Posted in Mountains, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 27, 2021 by xi'an

ISB@CIRM: through the looking glass

Posted in Mountains, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 10, 2021 by xi'an

It’s now official!, thanks to the support of the Société Mathématique de France (SMF), the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and the Université Aix-Marseille, we are going to have a mirror workshop at CIRM, Marseille (France, not South Africa or Ohio!) gathering local Bayesians to attend ISBA 2021 together over the week of 28 June – 2 July, and share more than a virtual meeting room, while increasing the motivation to attend all sessions over a five day ultra-marathon! We also hope to have outdoor poster sessions around breaks.There is no registration fee and no support either, the only cost being the full-board on-site accommodation at CIRM to be paid upon arrival. Registration is open. Until we reach the upper limit set by the centre and depending on the dynamics of the pandemic (and of the administration). So feel free to apply if you are reasonably confident to be allowed and able to reach CIRM on the week of 28 June – 2 July. Which means travelling within the EU, at best.

2021 Whova Meeting of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis

Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on May 5, 2021 by xi'an

The website for the incoming ISBA 2021 meeting is now operational and open to all! The program is ready, as well, with short courses starting on 23 June. And the main event on 28 June, with very long days, from 5:15am till 9:30pm in (US) Eastern Time (EDT, ie EST-05:00, UTC-06:00, CET-06:00, IST-9:30, CDT-11:00, JST-13:00, AEST-14:00). The number of registered participants is currently above 1700!, which shows the positive side of having a free on-line event since everyone (with an Internet connection!) interested can participate. On the negative side, namely the limited human interactions and the challenge of staying focussed 24/5, a solution stands in creating local clusters where a group could attend together the sessions. Provided local health policies allow. I am still working on gathering at CIRM, Marseille, if the centre reopens on 27 June. And am happy to broadcast any initiative to this effect.

data assimilation and reduced modelling for high-D problems [CIRM]

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 8, 2021 by xi'an

Next summer, from 19 July till 27 August, there will be a six week program at CIRM on the above theme, bringing together scientists from both the academic and industrial communities. The program includes a one-week summer school followed by 5 weeks of research sessions on projects proposed by academic and industrial partners.

Confirmed speakers of the summer school (Jul 19-23) are:

  • Albert Cohen (Sorbonne University)
  • Masoumeh Dashti (University of Sussex)
  • Eric Moulines (Ecole Polytechnique)
  • Anthony Nouy (Ecole Centrale de Nantes)
  • Claudia Schillings (Mannheim University)

Junior participants may apply for fellowships to cover part or the whole stay. Registration and application to fellowships will be open soon.