Archive for Statistics without Borders
we need a ceasefire now
Posted in Statistics with tags ceasefire, Doctors without Borders, Gaza, Médecins Sans Frontières, Palestine, Statistics without Borders, war crimes on December 16, 2023 by xi'an
more border policing won’t save lives
Posted in Kids, Travel with tags asylum, borders, European Union, migrants, NGO, refugees, Statistics without Borders on November 26, 2021 by xi'an
It is just shocking that the widespread reaction to an increasing number of migrants’ deaths (whether at sea or in the Belarus wetlands) is a call for more policing… And for criminalising NGOs that bring basic help to those stranded in liquid or terrestrial no man’s lands. The EU should act to give migrants and asylum seekers just-as-basic rights, rather than delegating its border control to non EU countries with abyssal human right records and accepting that its member states breach asylum laws and deny the victims their humanity.
Misera Carta Privationis
Posted in Kids, Travel with tags Brexit, Britain, England, Human Rights, King John, Latin, Magna Carta, migrations, nationality, refugees, Statistics without Borders on November 25, 2021 by xi'an
Read in The Guardian of 18 November that the UK Government was pushing for a new bill on nationality and borders that would
- open the possibility for said Government of stripping British citizens of their nationality without noticing them (and hence depriving them from appealing the decision)
- barring anyone arriving in the UK by an illegal route from claiming refugee status
- criminalising anyone trying save an illegal immigrant life
- giving UK Border Force staff immunity from prosecution if their operations result in death
which are failing basic human right principles in the country that established the Magna Carta as a basis for a lawful government… (From a cynic perspective, the 1253 charter was only giving right to a very small fraction of the English population, while serfdom lasted until 1574.) And another illustration of how Brexit is more easily used to cut rights than to establish new ones.
JB³ [Junior Bayes beyond the borders]
Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags Bayesian Analysis, Bayesian computation, BayesLab, Charles Stein, COVID-19, Italy, jBayes, JB³, jISBA, junior researchers, Milano, online seminar, OxWaSP, pandemic, Statistics without Borders, Stein's method, Università Bocconi, University College London, webinar on June 22, 2020 by xi'an
Bocconi and j-ISBA are launcing a webinar series for and by junior Bayesian researchers. The first talk is on 25 June, 25 at 3pm UTC/GMT (5pm CET) with Francois-Xavier Briol, one of the laureates of the 2020 Savage Thesis Prize (and a former graduate of OxWaSP, the Oxford-Warwick doctoral training program), on Stein’s method for Bayesian computation, with as a discussant Nicolas Chopin.
As pointed out on their webpage,
Due to the importance of the above endeavor, JB³ will continue after the health emergency as an annual series. It will include various refinements aimed at increasing the involvement of the whole junior Bayesian community and facilitating a broader participation to the online seminars all over the world via various online solutions.
Thanks to all my friends at Bocconi for running this experiment!
deaths at sea and a workshop
Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags CIRM, conference, death at sea, Frontex, Jason deCaires Taylor, Jean Morlet Chair, Lanzarote, Marseille, Mediterranean Sea, migrants, refugees, sculpture, Statistics without Borders, The Raft of Lampedusa, Université Aix Marseille, workshop on May 9, 2018 by xi'an
For several years, actually from the beginning of the Syrian revolution, I have been looking for data and for statisticians working on migrant deaths resulting from crossing the Mediterranean. With very little success, either because the researchers I met had poor and fragmented data, or because the agencies I contacted showed no (good) will into returning these statistics. Frontex being the most blatant example. I thus read with a lot of interest this article “Uncounted: Invisible Deaths on Europe’s Borders” which analyses the reasons for not producing statistics on the deaths at sea linked with desperate migrants crossing the sea in ill-suited boats.
In connection with this pressing issue, Kerrie Mengersen, Pierre Pudlo and myself organise next November a small workshop on Young Bayesians and Big Data for social good, at CIRM, Marseille, France. It will take place on the weekend before our main conference, Bayesian statistics in the Big Data era, that is, on 23-26 November 2018. Registration is free (and on site accomodation is cheap) but the number of attendees is limited, so apply asap! Senior participants include at this stage Tamara Broderick (MIT), Julien Cornebise (Element AI, TBC), David Corliss (Peace Work), Ruth King (Edinburgh), Cody Ross (UCSD, TBC), and the workshop aims at bringing participants to work together on methodological challenges and characteristic datasets. The outcome of the workshop will be presented at the beginning of the Bayesian statistics in the Big Data era, conference, on Monday 26 November.
