semi-automatic ABC

The talk of Wednesday afternoon Ordinary Meeting of the Royal Statistical Society went on quite well, I think. I would have expected a few more people (in general) and some specific people (in particular) but this being the last week of term the schedule was not the best of times. Paul Fearnhead gave the talk, insisting on the fact that ABC had to be evaluated on its own and relating the method to Rubin‘s 1984 and to Dingle and Gratton‘ [also] 1984 papers. The main discussant was Marc Beaumont, who gave a balanced overview of the paper along with connections with population genetics. As a seconder, I managed to cover most of the points I had prepared, even though I forgot the ritual final sentence (that I was seconding the vote of thanks), as in most of the past occasions I had to discuss a Read Paper…  Most of the discussants focussed on alternative ways to implement ABC, with one particularly interesting last minute intervention about the inflation represented by associating a summary statistic with each quantity of interest. As there were many written contributions as well, I am looking forward the published collection of the discussions (I wish were available on-line).