Archive for Vietnam
Saigon river [Sông Sài Gòn]
Posted in pictures, Travel with tags boat, red lantern, Saigon, Sông Sài Gòn, Vietnam on June 7, 2013 by xi'an
Statistics, with interactions
Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, regeneration, Saigon, simulation, SIOD 2013, testing of hypotheses, Ton Duc Thang University, Vietnam on June 6, 2013 by xi'an
Due to a tight June schedule (3rd conference in a week!), I only stayed one day at the SIOD 2013 conference in Saigon. (SIOD means Statistics and interaction with other disciplines.) The conference was housed by Ton Duc Thang University, on a very modern campus, and it sounded like the university had drafted a lot of his undergrads to catter to the SIOD participants: similar to the Bayesian conference in India a few months ago, those students would stand at the ready to guide us around the campus and to relay any problem to the organisers. This was very helpful and enjoyable, a plus being that most female students wore the traditional pink costume adopted by the university, but it also made me a wee bit uncomfortable as I do not know how much say those students had in this draft… In particular, most of the students I talked with were from other fields than Statistics. (And definitely not complaining, but being on the opposite very friendly the whole time!) A funny side story is that I got a wake-up call from the conference organisers in the morning as I had missed a welcome ceremony with the president due to oversleeping (itself due to an excess of iced coffee rather than minimal jetlag!). Among the few talks I attended, some French school statistics due to the presence of a large contingent from Toulouse, a talk about zero inflated normal distributions which sounded like missing-at-random normal observations (hence easy to process), and a talk about the point of using Bayes factors in hypothesis testing which essentially if independently provided a second version of my course from the previous day.
Yesterday, I also had a short discussion with Paul Minh who presented a talk on a general regenerative device for MCMC algorithms, using a bound on the target density rather than on the Markov transition in order to achieve easier regeneration. While a neat idea, this method requires the construction of a lower bound that can easily simulated. Furthermore, if the regeneration probability is low, the mixing speed may remain similar to the original MCMC sampler, as the method ressorts to a standard MCMC step on the remaining part of the target density.
Saigon skyline
Posted in pictures, Travel with tags Ho Chi Min City, Saigon, Vietnam on June 5, 2013 by xi'an
teaching Bayesian statistics in HoChiMin City
Posted in Books, Kids, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags crash course, pho, Saigon, students, The Bayesian Choice, Vietnam on June 5, 2013 by xi'an
Today, I gave my course at the University of Sciences (Truòng Dai hoc) here in Saigon in front of 40 students. It was a bit of a crash course and I covered between four and five chapters of The Bayesian Choice in about six hours. This was exhausting both for them and for me, but I managed to keep writing on the blackboard till the end and they bravely managed to keep their focus till the end as well. Since the students were of various backgrounds different from maths and stats (even though some were completing PhD’s involving Bayesian tools) I do wonder how much they sifted from this crash course, apart from my oft repeated messages that everyone had to pick a prior rather than go fishing for the prior… (No pho tday but a spicy beef stew and banh xeo local pancakes!) Here are the slides for the students:
