Archive for O’Bayes 2011

Bayesian nonparametrics

Posted in Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , on October 26, 2010 by xi'an

Here is an announcement for the 8th Bayesian Nonparametrics workshop:

The 8th Workshop on Bayesian Nonparametrics will be held from June 26 to 30, 2011 in Veracruz, Mexico. The objective of the meeting is to bring together experts and young talented scientists devoted to the study and application of Bayesian nonparametric techniques. The workshop is organized under the auspices of the Mexican Statistical Association (AME) and the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA).

The meeting will be structured in 4 tutorials on special topics, a series of invited and contributed talks and contributed posters sessions. For those interested this event will be preceded by the Mexican Workshop on Bayesian Statistics (TAMEB) which will feature a day of introductory courses (in Spanish) to Bayesian statistics.

As in the last Valencia meeting, there is also a student’s video/animation competition with a $1000 prize.

Although the timing of the workshop does not clash with the objective Bayes O’Bayes 2011 conference in Shanghai, those two meetings taking place within one month on opposite sides of the World will certainly put some pressure on two close and intersecting communities… (The ideal planning for future meetings on Bayesian Nonparametrics and O’Bayes conferences would be to hold them in the same location one after the other to make the most of travel expenses.)

People to People

Posted in Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , on June 19, 2010 by xi'an

I found in my mailbox today a very surprising mail from Sastry Pantula, current president of the ASA, inviting me to participate in a delegation of statisticians to China. (Most likely, the ASA first computed the expected response rate to this letter and multiplied the number of invitations accordingly!) The goal of this 12 day trip to China is to “explore matters of common interest regarding the development of statistical capacity in the workforce and statistical literacy in the general population. Delegates will learn about statistical literacy efforts in China, how statisticians are trained, and what statistical methods are found to be particularly useful in industry and agriculture.”  Delegates are also supposed to fund their own trip at an estimated cost of $5,495… What I find surprising is that a large professional and highly active society like ASA engages into this kind of very old-fashioned and dubiously profitable tradition of delegations, especially when considering the large amount of U.S. statisticians with Chinese origins who are presumably most aware of the possible links between statisticians from both countries. (Of course, missing a visit to Xi’an is a shame, but I hope to go there next year for the O’Bayes 2011 meeting, even Shanghai and Xi’an are not that close…) But I may obviously be missing an important feature of those People to People Citizen Ambassador Programs I have never heard of previously!