When I spotted this arXiv posting by Nils Hjort, Six-Minute Man Sander Eitrem 5:58.52 – first man below the 6:00.00 barrier, discussing Sander Eitrem‘s massive gain from the month-old previous record by Frenchman Timothy Loubineaud in Salt Lake City, just above 6’00”.. I was incredulous, not because I am knowledgeable in speed skating records, but because I was thinking of running… Where the World record is twice as large (12:35.36). Beyond my own personal interests, which drove the way I read this title, I was also stuck back in the past, with my last conversation with Nils being about long-distance running and record prediction, which happened quite a while ago when visiting the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge! (Nils’ note holds a reference to another famous Norwegian [runner], Jakob Ingebrigtsens.) Sander Eitrem also became the Olympic champion in Milano, breaking the Olympic record as well.
Archive for University of Cambridge
first man below the 6:00:00 barrier on the 5000m?!
Posted in Kids, Mountains, Running, Statistics, University life with tags Isaac Newton Institute, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Milano, Norway, Salt Lake City, speed skating, University of Cambridge, Winter Olympics, World record on February 14, 2026 by xi'anDavid MacKay remembrance day [27 March, Cambridge]
Posted in Books, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Bayesian inference, Cambridge Philosophical Society, Cambridge University Engineering Department, Cavendish Laboratory, Darwin College, David MacKay, machine learning, sustainable energy, University of Cambridge on February 8, 2026 by xi'an
[Re-posted:] Professor Sir David MacKay (1967-2016) made fundamental contributions to both public and theoretical understandings of energy and of information. He served as Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change and was Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Cavendish Laboratory before being appointed as the inaugural Regius Professor of Engineering. He was a Fellow of Darwin College.
This one-day meeting of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, dedicated to his memory, considers both the urgent challenges of sustainable energy resources and the global opportunities arising from information technologies. We will be addressing the two main themes of his work: machine learning, information theory and Bayesian inference, together with sustainable energy. The meeting marks the tenth anniversary of David’s death, with speakers who worked with David, build on his contributions in the field of energy and information, and share his values on the importance of clear and accessible communication.
The meeting in Cambridge University Engineering Department is open to all to attend, without charge. The lectures will be live-streamed; edited recordings will later be made available through the Cambridge Philosophical Society website. Registration for both in-person and virtual attendance is recommended.
David MacKay is remembered by many with great affection and respect as colleague, mentor and friend, and it will be good to share these memories. We have set up a webform for you to provide a personal tribute if you wish.
Natural statistical science [#1]
Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, data science, India, Indian Statistical Institute, International Prize in Statistics, ISI, Kolkata, Nature, obituary, R.A. Fisher, Rao-Blackwellisation, University of Cambridge on November 22, 2023 by xi'an
is it necessary to learn summary statistics? [One World ABC seminar]
Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags ABC, Approximate Bayesian computation, Bayesian learning, Bayesian neural networks, likelihood-free inference, One World ABC Seminar, posterior inference, summary statistics, University of Cambridge, University of Warwick, webinar on November 19, 2023 by xi'an
Next week, on 30 November, at 9am (UK time), Yanzhi Chen (Cambridge) will give a One World ABC webinar on Is “It Necessary to Learn Summary Statistics for Likelihood-free Inference?”, a PMLR paper join with Michael Guttman and Adrian Weller:
Likelihood-free inference (LFI) is a set of techniques for inference in implicit statistical models. A longstanding question in LFI has been how to design or learn good summary statistics of data, but this might now seem unnecessary due to the advent of recent end-to- end (i.e. neural network-based) LFI methods. In this work, we rethink this question with a new method for learning summary statistics. We show that learning sufficient statistics may be easier than direct posterior inference, as the former problem can be reduced to a set of low-dimensional, easy-to-solve learning problems. This suggests us to explicitly decouple summary statistics learning from posterior inference in LFI. Experiments on five inference tasks with different data types validate our hypothesis.
Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao (1920-2023)
Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags C.R. Rao, Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, handbook, India, Kolkata, Pitman nearness, Purdue University, R.A. Fisher, Rao-Blackwellisation, Significance, University of Calcutta, University of Cambridge on August 26, 2023 by xi'an
Just heard that C.R. Rao had passed away on Wednesday. Above is a 1941 picture I photographed while attending the jubilee of the Department of Statistics of the University of Calcuta. Showing R.A. Fisher and P.C. Mahalanobis surrounded by faculty and students from the Department. Including a very young Rao who would a few years later go to Cambridge and write a PhD thesis on ANOVA under the supervision of R.A. Fisher. While my own interactions with C.R. Rao have been quite limited, from attending a seminar dinner with him when he visited Purdue University in 1988, to writing a critical assessment of Pitman nearness that he reportedly disliked, to writing chapters in some of the handbooks he edited and a review paper on Rao-Blackwellisation for the International Statistical Review special issue for his 100th birthday (which almost coincided with mine, one day off), he stood as a giant of the field, having impacted statistics and beyond in many and profound ways. The Hindu published an obituary immediately after his death, while Current Science has a longer if older biography full of pictures and Significance a series of articles on “C.R. Rao’s Century”. However, I’d like to recall this quote of his’, acknowledging his mother for his work habits.
‘For instilling in me the quest for knowledge, I owe to my mother, A. Laxmikanthamma, who, in my younger days, woke me up every day at four in the morning and lit the oil lamp for me to study in the quiet hours of the morning when the mind is fresh.’
