Archive for Nice
2025 IMS International Conference on Statistics and Data Science in Sevilla [Dec. 15-18]
Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags AISTATS 2016, Andalucía, Christopher Columbus, Christophorus Columbus, colonialism, Cristóbal Colón, Cristoforo Colombo, egg of Columbus, Guadalquivir, ICSDS 2024, ICSDS 2025, IMS, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Nice, Sevilla, South America, Spanish Conquest on June 14, 2025 by xi'an
OCEAN day
Posted in Kids, pictures, Travel with tags 2025 UN Ocean Conference, CNRS, conservation, deep-sea mining, France, Goal 14, Ifremer, industrial fishing, marine protected areas, Nice, oceans, One Ocean Science Congress, plastic pollution, sustainability, UN, UNOCE 2025 on June 9, 2025 by xi'an
Terra Nostra
Posted in pictures, Travel, Wines with tags Bastia, blended wine, Corsica, Corsican wines, France, French Riviera, IMS conference, Nice, Niellucciu, pissaladière, red wine, supermarket on May 20, 2025 by xi'anr
Nature (statistical) tidbits
Posted in Statistics with tags academic misconduct, AI, archiving, Australia, big data, bioscurity risks, ChatGPT, concentration of power, contamination, cover, design of experiments, digital preservation, exploratory data analysis, Google Scholar, hypothesis testing, megafires, Nature, NHS, Nice, open AI, OpenAI, quantum computing, Ryugu, statistical hypotheses, Trump administration, wallaby, widlfire on January 3, 2025 by xi'an
- a call for a general digital preservation of research documents, since many articles have gone awol,
- another tribune on the importance of experimental design (!), with basic recommendations such as running longitudinal studies, using the right statistical models, ensuring that findings are statistically significant and reproducible…
- yet another column on the importance of open-ended, exploratory, research, rather than sticking to confirmatory studies and “thinking of hypothesis testing as the main job of a (social science) researcher¨,
- a reanalysis of the Ryugu microbes brought back to Earth by Hayabusa2, found to be the result of a contamination,
- several entries on the scary prospect of the incoming Trump administration on the NHS, health, reproductive care, &tc.
- a prospective article on the incoming demise of Google scholar when faced with more advanced (AI) alternatives, as well as the scary possibility that AIs may lead to the creation of uncontrollable pathogens, although the call for companies taking responsibility sounds both naïve and insecure, as does the AI Action Summit in Paris next February, as well as a perspective paper on how open AI is far from open,
- and several entries on quantum computing, like AlphaQubit,
Nice meeting!
Posted in pictures, R, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Approximate Bayesian computation, Bayesian bootstrap, Bayesian predictive, BIRS, Côte d'Azur, Chennai, Chennai Mathematical Institute, e-values, French Riviera, Gibbs sampling, hypothesis testing, ICSDS 2024, IMS, indistinguishability, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Neyman-Pearson tests, Nice, open water swimming, p-values, predatory conferences, Promenade des Anglais, reproducible research, Uppsala, w on December 18, 2024 by xi'an
The ICSDS 2024 meeting in Nice is quite impressive and not primarily because it is in Nice under a beautiful December sun. As other (numerous) IMS meetings I attended (since the initial one in Uppsala in 1990!), the program is of high quality and along topics that are currently moving fast or emerging. From the sessions I attended, e-values are strongly represented, although it remains unclear to me why they should constitute a major departure from p-values, as they stick to hypothesis testing, Type I error, power, and the whole paraphernalia of Neyman-Pearson formalism. If I manage to attend a BIRS workshop on the subject next Summer, I may manage to get a better e-derstanding!
The MCMC (only!) session included a presentation by Guanyang Wang that generalised different approximate MCMC schemes into a unified one. And one by Filippo Ascolani on Gibbs beating the competition! I also attended the Bayesian prediction session, where my friends Sonia Petrone and Chris Holmes have presentations on their respective Series B papers. I discussed both on the ‘Og, on 15 March 2023 and 07 November 2022, respectively. This time, I found that both talks had a Bayesian bootstrap flavour, which is not surprising when considering the non-parametric nature of the approach. And they left me wondering at it being protected from overfitting.
My only plenary session was Cynthia Dwork’s on outcome indistinguishability, which, while related to the privacy topics I was topic, remained somewhat obscure as to its purpose. Meaning I have to get through the paper to get a more holistic perspective.
Of course, Nice in Winter is a very nice place, with the waterfront available for running an uninterrupted 15km as we found out with Jérémie Houssineau (at a brisk 4’09” pace I had not planned before starting!) and the sea all for myself (for a dozen minutes before losing digits!). Unfortunately I had to skip the final day due to examinations of the Paris Dauphine MASH master. And miss Stan receiving a student award. But I am looking forward the next iterations of ICSDS. (Not including Copenhagen, Madrid and many many other places in 2025, since ICSDS seemed a most common name for conferences, some presumably predatory! The true location is Sevilla, to keep up with the Mediterranean theme of ICSDS!)
