Archive for Melbourne
St Kilda beach [jatp]
Posted in pictures, Running with tags Australia, jatp, Melbourne, Pacific Ocean, palm trees, sea, St Kilda, sunset on November 30, 2023 by xi'an
2023 Workshop in honour of Professors Donald Poskitt and Gael Martin
Posted in Statistics, University life with tags ABC, Approximate Bayesian computation, approximate Bayesian inference, Australia, Bayesian asymptotics, conference, econometrics, jetlag, Melbourne, Monash University, plenary speaker, Victoria, workshop on November 29, 2023 by xi'an
off to St. Kilda
Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life, Wines with tags Australia, Bayesian Nonparametrics Networking Workshop 2023, BNP, conference, Hobsons Bay, Melbourne, Monash Business School, Monash University, Outer Hebrides, Pacific Ocean, Phillip Island, Singapore, St Kilda, Uist, Victoria on November 27, 2023 by xi'an
a genuine riddle
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags Aboriginal art, FiveThirtyEight, logic, Melbourne, The Riddler, urn models on August 5, 2022 by xi'an
A riddle from The Riddler that was pure (if straightforward) logic rather than brute force compulation or mathematical modelling:
Four bags of many marbles are labelled R(ed), B(lue), G(green) and μ (mixed), except that all labels are wrong. Given the possibility to draw two balls, one at a time, from any bag, is it possible to select two monochromatic bags?
Bag μ draw is returning a color, R say, as it is a monochromatic bag. Drawing from another color bag, B say, will produce R or B, in which case it is μ, i.e., mixed (polychromatic), which means the other bags are monochromatic, or G. For this last case, bag B is either polychromatic, in which case bag G is made of blue marbles and bag R of green marbles, or monochromatic, in which case bag G is mixed and bag R is full of blue marbles, but monochromatic for either situation, hence to be chosen on top of bag μ.
ABC in Svalbard [the day after]
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, R, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags ABC, ABC in Svalbard, Australia, Australian wines, Bayesian synthetic likelihood, Brisbane, CIRM, Grenoble, ISBA 2020, Longyearbyen, Marseille, Melbourne, mirror workshop, Monash University, Queensland University of Technology, QUT, The Morse Bask, Université Paris Dauphine, virtual conference, webinar, wine and cheese on April 19, 2021 by xi'an
The following and very kind email was sent to me the day after the workshop
thanks once again to make the conference possible. It was full of interesting studies within a friendly environment, I really enjoyed it. I think it is not easy to make a comfortable and inspiring conference in a remote version and across two continents, but this has been the result. I hope to be in presence (maybe in Svalbard!) the next edition.
and I fully agree to the talks behind full of interest and diverse. And to the scheduling of the talks across antipodal locations a wee bit of a challenge, mostly because of the daylight saving time switches! And to seeing people together being a comfort (esp. since some were enjoying wine and cheese!).
I nonetheless found the experience somewhat daunting, only alleviated by sharing a room with a few others in Dauphine and having the opportunity to react immediately (and off-the-record) to the on-going talk. As a result I find myself getting rather scared by the prospect of the incoming ISBA 2021 World meeting. With parallel sessions and an extensive schedule from 5:30am till 9:30pm (in EDT time, i.e. GMT-4) that nicely accommodates the time zones of all speakers. I am thus thinking of (safely) organising a local cluster to attend the conference together and recover some of the social interactions that are such an essential component of [real] conferences, including students’ participation. It will of course depend on whether conference centres like CIRM reopen before the end of June. And if enough people see some appeal in this endeavour. In the meanwhile, remember to register for ISBA 2021 and for free!, before 01 May.
