Archive for Edinburgh

off to Edinburgh [and SMC 2024]

Posted in Books, Mountains, pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , on May 12, 2024 by xi'an

IMG_9351Today I am off to Edinburgh for the SMC 2024 workshop run by the ICMS. Looking forward meeting with long time friends and new ones, and learning about novel directions in the field. And returning to Edinburgh I last visited in 2019 for the opening of the Bayes Centre. Hoping to enjoy the nearby Arthur’s Seat volcano and maybe farther away Munroes, depending on the program, train schedules, and…weather forecasts!

the flawed genius of William Playfair [book review]

Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 26, 2024 by xi'an

David Bellhouse has written a new book on the history of statistics, focussing on William Playfair this time (following his fantastic book on Abraham de Moivre). The Flawed Genius of William Playfair (The Story of the Father of Statistical Graphics) got published a few months ago by the University of Toronto Press.

“[Playfair] was an ideas man whose ideas often did not come to fruition; or, when they did, they withered or exploded.” [p.121]

The impressions I retained from reading this detailed account of a perfect unknown (for me) are of a rather unpleasant, unappealing, unsuccessful, fame-seeking, inefficient, short-sighted, self-aggrandising,  bigoted, dishonest, man, running from debtors for most of his life, with jail episodes for bankruptcy, while trying to make a living from all sorts of doomed enterprises, short-lived blackmailing attempts, and mediocre books that did not sell to many. Similar to David Bellhouse’s colleague earlier wondering at the appeal of exposing such a rogue character, I am left with this lingering interrogation after finishing the book

“[Richard] Price liked what Playfair had written. He found [in 1786] Playfair to be “agreeable” and “useful”.” [p.64]

Not that I did not enjoy reading it!, as it gives a most interesting of the era between the 18th and the 19th Centuries, in particular in its detailed narration of the first months of the French Revolution of 1789, and of the impact of the Industrial Revolution on economics and politics as the birth of capitalism. The book abounds in crossing lots of historical characters, like Richard Price (Bayes’s friend who published his most famous paper), Adam Smith (whose book Playfair reprinted with poor additions), Edward Gibbons (whose book along with Smith’s inspired the title of his Inquiry Into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations), Thomas Malthus (competing for an annotated edition of Smith’s book), not to mention the political class of Britain at the time. David Bellhouse’s book demonstrates academic and historical excellence, constantly being very detailed, with a wealth of references, documents, and definite support for or against the rumours that accompany the life and deeds of Playfair. (Frankly, rarely a name has been that inappropriate!) This includes for instance the pictures pointing out to his first (?) forged signature [p.140] and the evacuation of the myth of Playfair as a spy for the British Crown—which the Wikipedia page happily reproduces, pointing out the need for an in-depth revision of said page. Similarly, the book delivered a convincing discussion of arguments for and mostly against Playfair “being the key player in the British operation to forge [French] assignats” towards destroying its economy. A lot of the book is touching upon the then novel issue of paper money, which Playfair only and negatively considered through his own (and catastrophic) experiences. At times, the book is almost too scholarly as it makes reading less fluid than was the case his Abraham de Moivre for instance. (And obviously less than in the contemporary Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel!)

It may be that my very relative lack of enthusiasm stems from the realisation that the story of Playfair is overall rather little connected with statistical inference, if not with descriptive statistics (albeit with a complete disregard for the quality and sources of his data), as when  publishing a Statistical Breviary on descriptive statistics for a series of countries (and surprisingly sold on Amazon!).  Or Statistical Account of the United States of America. And of course for his innovative graphical representations like the one represented on the cover of the book or the pie chart. I feel that the book is much more engaged in Playfair’s contributions to the then nascent science of economics, as for instant about the shallow and mostly misguided views of his’ on banking and running the economy, while conducting his personal finance and investments so disastrously that it negatively advertised against confidence in such views.

On a very personal level, I noticed that some graphs were provided by my friend and statistics historian Stephen Stigler [who also wrote a review of the book] while an analysis of the poor French involved in a coding scam of Playfair about Napoléon’s escape from Elba was by Christian Genest (whom I first met at a statistics conference dinner on the Lac de Neufchâtel in 1986).

[Disclaimer about potential self-plagiarism: this post or an edited version will eventually appear in my Books Review section in CHANCE. As appropriate for a book about Chance!]

 

histories of sign languages

Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 8, 2024 by xi'an

Congrats to Grégoire Clarté (now in Edinburgh) and Robin Ryder who, along with coauthors from several instutions, published an article in Science this week about the philogenetic tree of (Asian and European) sign languages for the deaf people. Part of Grégoire’s thesis contained preliminary work on this problem.

Abstract

Sign languages are naturally occurring languages. As such, their emergence and spread reflect the histories of their communities. However, limitations in historical recordkeeping and linguistic documentation have hindered the diachronic analysis of sign languages. In this work, we used computational phylogenetic methods to study family structure among 19 sign languages from deaf communities worldwide. We used phonologically coded lexical data from contemporary languages to infer relatedness and suggest that these methods can help study regular form changes in sign languages. The inferred trees are consistent in key respects with known historical information but challenge certain assumed groupings and surpass analyses made available by traditional methods. Moreover, the phylogenetic inferences are not reducible to geographic distribution but do affirm the importance of geopolitical forces in the histories of human languages.

a mere £1,500 dinner

Posted in Travel, Wines with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 5, 2024 by xi'an

As a one-time patron of the X on Kenilworth, I received an invitation to join the fundraising Bocuse d’Or UK gala diner, at a mere £1,500 each (with the helpful addition that 10 tickets would cost £10,500!]. Despite being partial to foie gras, buckwheat, scallops, Jerusalem artichokes, and vin jaune, methinks I will pass the offer since the wine list is not included…

Bocuse d’Or UK Fundraising Gala Menu

Canapés
Smoked duck doughnut, celeriac, Perigord [sic] black truffle
Cured trout aged in beeswax, timut pepper, pickled Potimarron, dashi jelly
Mushroom tuile, wild mushroom parfait, Douglas pine (vegan)
Seaweed tartelette, oyster and Coco bean sphere, Petrossian caviar
Cracker with Duperier [sic] foie gras, Gewürztraminer jelly, sancho pepper
Marco Zampese, Hélène Darroze at The Connaught

Shetland mussel bavaroise scented with turmeric
Lemon gel with fresh coriander and buckwheat grains
Daniel Stucki, The Lecture Room & Library at sketch

Hand-dived scallop, citrus beurre blanc and Petrossian caviar
Jean-Philippe Blondet, Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester

Megrim sole filled with truffle flavoured mousse baked in puff pastry
Vin jaune and langoustine sauce
Alain Roux, The Waterside Inn

Grass fed, 60-day dry aged beef
Jerusalem artichoke, crones, black garlic
Matt Abé, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay

‘Core apple’
Clare Smyth, CORE by Clare Smyth

“Anvil”
Caramel mousse with our miso, apple and spruce
Simon Rogan, L’Enclume

“Like a kid in a sweet shop”
Edward Cooke, The Fat Duck

sequential meetings in Edinburgh

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 24, 2023 by xi'an


There will be not one but two consecutive events in Edinburgh next May²⁴ on sequential Monte Carlo methods! Both hosted by the fantastic International Centre for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS) in Edinburgh Olde Town. Within the Bayes Centre. And running distance to Arthur’s Seat. (Reminding me of my first ICMS workshop in 2001 run with Mike Titterington. May have been my first week long visit to Edinburgh as well…)

First, a Summer School on Bayesian filtering: fundamental theory and numerical methods (SSBF 2024), Edinburgh (UK), May 6-10, 2024. This summer (in the Scottish sense!) school will cover topics related to fundamental theory, state-of-the-art methodologies, and real-world applications.

Second, a Sequential Monte Carlo workshop (SMC 2024), the week later, on May 13-17, 2024. The workshop will cover topics related to sequential Monte Carlo and nearby fields, from theory to applications, following earlier workshops in the series. Including the one at CREST in 2015.

Thanks to Víctor Elvira, Jana de Wiljes, and Dan Crisan for this double deal (and the opportunity to return to Scotland for the first time since the pandemic).