what a party!

We ended up having a terrific b’day party last Thursday after noon, with about 30 friends listening in Institut Henri Poincaré to Florence, Pierre, and Sylvia giving lectures on my favourite themes, namely ABC, MCMC, and mixture inference. Incl. subtle allusions to my many idiosyncrasies in three different flavours!  And a limited number of anecdotes, incl. the unavoidable Cancún glasses disaster! We later headed to a small Ethiopian restaurant located on the other side of the Panthéon, rue de l’Ecole Polytechnique (rather than on the nearby rue Laplace!), which was going to be too tiny for us, especially in these COVID times, until the sky cleared up and the restaurant set enough tables in the small street to enjoy their injeras and wots till almost midnight. The most exciting episode of the evening came when someone tried to steal some of our bags that had been stored in a back room and when Tony spotted the outlier and chased him till the thief dropped the bags..! Thanks to Tony for saving the evening and our computers!!! To Éric, Jean-Michel and Judith for organising this 9/9 event (after twisting my arm just a wee bit). And to all my friends who joined the party, some from far away…

off to Oaxaca! [workshop 18w5023]

This morning I am off to Oaxaca, Mexico, for a week-long workshop which aims at bringing together a mixed audience of statisticians who are using and developing computational methods, researchers involved in computational statistical mechanics and its applications (e.g., materials science, biophysics), and applied mathematicians studying numerical methods used in the field of application from a mathematical viewpoint. As a co-organiser, with Gabriel Stolz and Luke Bornn, I hope that the workshop will truly see the start of a pragmatic cross-fertilization between fields through the exchange of ideas and methods such as research lectures, discussions, and practical sessions based on benchmark systems. This is also my first time at the Casa Matemática Oaxaca, as opposed to my several stays at BIRS, and I am quite excited to discover the place (although the workshop will take place in an hotel as the conference facilities are still under completion after that many years!) and the surroundings. (This is also my second visit to Mexico after the ISBA conference in Cancún in 2014.)

BIRS call for Oaxaca

Here is a call for support from Nassim Goussoub, Scientific Director of BIRS:I would  like to call upon you to consider aiding the people of the State of Oaxaca. As you may know, through their support for BIRS-CMO, the people of Oaxaca have welcomed the World’s mathematical sciences community with open arms. With the plans to build a permanent facility under way, they are destined to be our hosts for years to come. I therefore ask you to contribute — if you can. Here are some of the foundations accepting donations.

1. Francisco Toledo’s Foundation, IAGO (Instituto Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca) https://www.paypal.me/donativoistmo

2. International Community Foundation(ICF) https://donate.icfdn.org/npo/international-disaster-relief-fund

3. Global Giving https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/mexico-earthquake-and-hurricane-relief-fund/

4. Red Cross Mexico https://www.cruzrojamexicana.org.mx 6. Unicef Mexico https://www.unicef.org/mexico/spanish/

ISBA 2016 [logo]

Things are starting to get in place for the next ISBA 2016 World meeting, in Forte Village Resort Convention Center, Sardinia, Italy. June 13-17, 2016. And not only the logo inspired from the nuraghe below. I am sure the program will be terrific and make this new occurrence of a “Valencia meeting” worth attending. Just like the previous occurrences, e.g. Cancún last summer and Kyoto in 2012.

However, and not for the first time, I wonder at the sustainability of such meetings when faced with always increasing—or more accurately sky-rocketing!—registration fees… We have now reached €500 per participant for the sole (early reg.) fees, excluding lodging, food or transportation. If we bet on 500 participants, this means simply renting the convention centre would cost €250,000 for the four or five days of the meeting. This sounds enormous, even accounting for the processing costs of the congress organiser. (By comparison, renting the convention centre MCMSki in Chamonix for three days was less than €20,000.) Given the likely high costs of staying at the resort, it is very unlikely I will be able to support my PhD students  As I know very well of the difficulty to find dedicated volunteers willing to offer a large fraction of their time towards the success of behemoth meetings, this comment is by no means aimed at my friends from Cagliari who kindly accepted to organise this meeting. But rather at the general state of academic meetings which costs makes them out of reach for a large part of the scientific community.

Thus, this makes me wonder anew whether we should move to a novel conference model given that the fantastic growth of the Bayesian community makes the ideal of gathering together in a single beach hotel for a week of discussions, talks, posters, and more discussions unattainable. If truly physical meetings are to perdure—and this notion is as debatable as the one about the survival of paper versions of the journals—, a new approach would be to find a few universities or sponsors able to provide one or several amphitheatres around the World and to connect all those places by teleconference. Reducing the audience size at each location would greatly the pressure to find a few huge and pricey convention centres, while dispersing the units all around would diminish travel costs as well. There could be more parallel sessions and ways could be found to share virtual poster sessions, e.g. by having avatars presenting some else’s poster. Time could be reserved for local discussions of presented papers, to be summarised later to the other locations. And so on… Obviously, something would be lost of the old camaraderie, sharing research questions and side stories, as well as gossips and wine, with friends from all over the World. And discovering new parts of the World. But the cost of meetings is already preventing some of those friends to show up. I thus think it is time we reinvent the Valencia meetings into the next generation. And move to the Valenci-e-meetings.

To Susie [by Kerrie Mengersen]

[Here is a poem written by my friend Kerrie for the last ISBA cabaret in Cancun, to Susie who could not make it to a Valencia meeting for the first time… Along with a picture of Susie, Alicia and Jennifer taking part in another ISBA cabaret in Knossos, Crete, in 2000.]

This is a parody of a classic Australian bush poem, ‘The Man from Snowy River’, that talks of an amazing horseman in the rugged mountain bush of Australia, who out-performed the ‘cracks’ and became a legend. That’s how I think of Susie, so this very bad poem comes with a big thanks for being such an inspiration, a great colleague and a good friend.

There was movement in the stats world as the emails caught alight
For the cult from Reverend Bayes had got away
And had joined the ‘ISBA’ forces, and were calling for a fight
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.

All the noted statisticians from the countries near and far
Had flown into Cancun overnight
For the Bayesians love their meetings where the sandy beaches are
And the Fishers snuffed the battle with delight.

There were Jim and Ed and Robert, who were ‘fathers of the Bayes’
They were known as the whiskey drinking crowd
But they’d invented all the theory in those Valencia days
Yes, they were smart, but oh boy were they loud!

And Jose M Bernardo came down to lend a hand
A finer Bayesian never wrote a prior
And Mike West, Duke of Bayesians, also joined the band
And brought down all the graduates he could hire

Sonia and Maria strapped their laptops to the cause
And Anto, Chris and Peter ran – in thongs!
Sirs Adrian and David came with armour and a horse
While Brad and Gareth murdered battle songs

And one was there, a Spaniard, blonde and fierce and proud
With a passion for statistics and for fun
She’d been there with the founders of the nouveau Bayesian crowd
And kept those Fisher stats folk on the run

But Jim’s subjective prior made him doubt her power to fight
Mike Goldstein said, ‘That girl will never do,
In the heat of battle, deary, you just don’t have the might
This stoush will be too rough for such as you.’

 But Berger and Bernardo came to Susie’s side
We think we ought to let her in, they said
For we warrant she’ll be with us when the blood has fairly dried
For Susie is Valencia born and bred.

She did her Bayesian training in the classic Spanish way
Where the stats is twice as hard and twice as rough
And she knows nonparametrics, which is useful in a fray
She’s soft outside, but inside, man she’s tough!

She went. They found those Fisher stats folk sunning on the beach
And as they grabbed their laptops from the sand
Jim Berger muttered fiercely, ‘right, twist any head you reach
We cannot let those Fish get out of hand.’

Alicia, grab a Dirichlet and break them with a stick
Chris, it’s easy, just like ABC
And Sylvia, a mixture model ought to do the trick
But just you leave that Ronnie up to me.

Jose battled them with inference and curdled Neyman’s blood
And Ed told jokes that made them shake their head
And posteriors lined like beaches like sandbags for a flood
And Jim threw whiskey bottles as they fled.

And when the Bayesians and the Fishers were washed up on the sand
The fight was almost judged to be a tie
But it was Susie who kept going, who led the final charge
For she didn’t want objective Bayes to die

She sent the beach on fire as she galloped through the fray
Hurling P and F tests through the foam
‘til the Fishers raised surrender and called the fight a day
And shut their laptops down and sailed for home.

And now at ISBA meetings where the Bayesians spend their days
To laugh and learn and share a drink or two
A glass is always toasted: to Susie, Queen of Bayes
And the cheering echoes loudly round the crew.

She will be remembered for setting Bayesian stats on fire
For her contributions to the field are long
And her passion and her laughter will continue to inspire
The Bayesian from Valencia lives on!