Due to the new lockdown measures enforced in France and in particular in Marseilles, the CIRM workshop on QMC and randomness has turned virtual, and I will thus give my talk on Coordinate sampler : A non-reversible Gibbs-like sampler from Paris. Rather than from the Luminy campus after an early morning run to the top of Mont Puget as we used to do on the previous workshop there. With versions of PDMP running on QMC (which makes sense when considering the deterministic component of the sampler).
Archive for SMF
away from CIRM
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags calanques, CIRM, coordinate sampler, Gibbs sampler, Luminy campus, Markov chain Monte Carlo, Marseille, Mont Puget, PDMP, SMF on November 5, 2020 by xi'anten day mathematical competition for undergrads [no stats!]
Posted in Kids, Statistics, University life with tags competition, mathematics, SMF, Société Mathématique de France on September 27, 2018 by xi'an
Masterclass in Bayesian Statistics in Marseilles next Fall
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, R, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Aalto Science Institute, applied Bayesian analysis, Bayesian statistics, calanques, CIRM, CNRS, France, INLA, Luminy, Marseille, masterclass, Méditerranée, Provence, QUT, R, SMF, STAN on April 9, 2018 by xi'an
This post is to announce a second occurrence of the exciting “masterclass in Bayesian Statistics” that we organised in 2016, near Marseilles. It will take place on 22-26 October 2018 once more at CIRM (Centre International de Recherches Mathématiques, Luminy, Marseilles, France). The targeted audience includes all scientists interested in learning how Bayesian inference may be used to tackle the practical problems they face in their own research. In particular PhD students and post-docs should benefit most directly from this masterclass. Among the invited speakers, Kerrie Mengersen from QUT, Brisbane, visiting Marseilles this Fall, will deliver a series of lectures on the interface between Bayesian statistics and applied modelling, Havard Rue from KAUST will talk on computing with INLA, and Aki Vehtari from Aalto U, Helsinki, will give a course on Bayesian model assessment and model choice. There will be two tutorials on R and on Stan.
All interested participants in this masterclass should pre-register as early as possible, given that the total attendance is limited to roughly 90 participants. Some specific funding for local expenses (i.e., food + accommodation on-siteat CIRM) is available (thanks to CIRM, and potentially to Fondation Jacques Hadamard, to be confirmed); this funding will be attributed by the scientific committee, with high priority to PhD students and post-docs.
back from CIRM
Posted in Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Bayesian statistics, boar, calanques, Cassis, CIRM, Luminy, Marseille, Mont Puget, SMF, summer school, Université Aix Marseille, wikipedia on March 20, 2016 by xi'anAs should be clear from earlier posts, I tremendously enjoyed this past week at CIRM, Marseille, and not only for providing a handy retreat from where I could go running and climbing at least twice a day! The programme (with slides and films soon to be available on the CIRM website) was very well-designed with mini-courses and talks of appropriate length and frequency. Thanks to Nicolas Chopin (ENSAE ParisTech) and Gilles Celeux (Inria Paris) for constructing so efficiently this program and to the local organisers Thibaut Le Gouic (Ecole Centrale de Marseille), Denys Pommeret (Aix-Marseille Université), and Thomas Willer (Aix-Marseille Université) for handling the practical side of inviting and accommodating close to a hundred participants on this rather secluded campus. I hope we can reproduce the experiment a few years from now. Maybe in 2018 if we manage to squeeze it between BayesComp 2018 [ex-MCMski] and ISBA 2018 in Edinburgh.
One of the bonuses of staying at CIRM is indeed that it is fairly isolated and far from the fury of down-town Marseille, which may sound like a drag, but actually helps with concentration and interactions. Actually, the whole Aix-Marseille University campus of Luminy on which CIRM is located is surprisingly quiet: we were there in the very middle of the teaching semester and saw very few students around (although even fewer boars!). It is a bit of a mystery that a campus built in such a beautiful location with the Mont Puget as its background and the song of cicadas as the only source of “noise” is not better exploited towards attracting more researchers and students. However remoteness and lack of efficient public transportation may explain a lot about this low occupation of the campus. As may the poor quality of most buildings on the campus, which must be unbearable during the summer months…
In a potential planning for the future Bayesian week at CIRM, I think we could have some sort of poster sessions after-dinner (with maybe a cash bar operated by some of the invited students since there is no bar at CIRM or around). Or trail-running under moonlight, trying to avoid tripping over rummaging boars… A sort of Kaggle challenge would be nice but presumably too hard to organise. As a simpler joint activity, we could collectively contribute to some wikipedia pages related to Bayesian and computational statistics.
Puget sound [and sights]
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags bastide, Bayesian statistics, calanques, CIRM, Luminy, Mont Puget, SMF, view on February 29, 2016 by xi'an
