Viva in Toronto (not really!)

This was the second viva of the week, for the thesis of Madeleine Thompson, but as it was in Toronto, I took part in it by a phone connection. This was rather ineffective as the connection was rather poor and I could not follow most of the questions… I had previously read (and commented) two papers,  Slice Sampling with Adaptive Multivariate Steps: The Shrinking-Rank Method, and Graphical Comparison of MCMC Performance,  co-written by Madeleine so I was well-aware of a part of the contents of the thesis, which I read in toto a few weeks ago. It was an interesting thesis with diversified threads in the various chapter, but I found frustrating to be unable to fully take part in the thesis debate… In retrospect, I should have flown to Toronto from Manchester yesterday or abstained from taking part in the viva!