postdoc at Warwick on robust SMC [call]

Here is a call for a research fellow at the University of Warwick to work with Adam Johansen and Théo Damoulas on the EPSRC and Lloyds Register Foundaton funded project “Robust Scalable Sequential Monte Carlo with application to Urban Air Quality”. To quote

The position will be based primarily at the Department of Statistics of the University of Warwick. The post holder will work closely in collaboration with the rest of the project team and another postdoctoral researcher to be recruited shortly to work within the Data Centric Engineering programme at the Alan Turing Institute in London. The post holder will be expected to visit the Alan Turing Institute regularly.

Candidates with strong backgrounds in the mathematical analysis of stochastic algorithms or sequential Monte Carlo methods are particularly encouraged to apply. Closing date is 19 Jan 2020.

last call for O’Bayes in Warwick

This is a last call for late participants or would-be participants to the O’Bayes conference at the end of the month, in Warwick on 28 June – 02 July, and right after the BNP 12 conference. Posters can still be submitted to me and registration is still open for another two weeks.

ABC in Grenoble, 19-20 March 2020

The next occurrence of the “ABC in…” workshops will take place in Grenoble, France, on 19-20 March 2020. Both local organising and international scientific committees have been constituted and the program should soon be constructed, along with calls to contributions launched at the same time. As in most earlier versions of the workshops (ABC in Paris, London, Roma, &tc.), we are aiming at a workshop atmosphere and, thanks to local sponsors, the registration fees if any will be low.

Grenoble can be easily reached by fast trains from Paris, Roissy, Geneva and Lyon. (There are also flights to Grenoble airport from Warwick, as well as Bristol, Edinburgh, London, Manchester, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Warsaw, but this is less convenient than flying to Lyon Saint-Exupery airport and catching a fast train at the airport.) To add to the appeal of the place, the workshop occurs during the skiing season, with three mountain ranges in the close vicinity. Making ABski a genuine possibility for the weekend after!

MaxEnt 2019 [last call]

For those who definitely do not want to attend O’Bayes 2019 in Warwick,  the Max Ent 2019 conference is taking place at the Max Planck Institute for plasma physics in Garching, near Münich, (south) Germany at the same time. Registration is still open at a reduced rate and it is yet not too late to submit an abstract. A few hours left. (While it is still possible to submit a poster for O’Bayes 2019 and to register.)

grey sister [book review]

Unsurprisingly, as soon I got my hands on the second [hardcover] volume after Red Sister, Grey Sister, I could not resist reading it. Nursing a serious cold, gotten while visiting Warwick wearing only summer gear (!), helped and I thus spent my Sunday reading feverishly through Mark Lawrence’s latest book. As I enjoyed very much the first volume, immersing into the same “boarding school” atmosphere was easy, reuniting with most characters, including some I though had been dead and missing others I had not realised they had been killed (no spoiler, just my imperfect memory!).

“The greatest threat to any faith is not other faiths or beliefs but the corruption and division of its own message”

With this bias inherited from the earlier volume, read four weeks ago, I cannot say I did not enjoy the book. Actually, the first half of Grey Sister is more enjoyable than the first volume because the training of the young novices in the Sweet Mercy monastery gets more focused, with more complex challenges, and less boarding school bickering nonsense. Except for one main thread that weights too much on the plot in my opinion (no spoiler, again, as it is almost obvious from the start that the rivalry between Nona, the main character, and a high born novice is there for a purpose). There is an Ender’s Game moment that I particularly enjoyed, with an Alexander’s resolution of a Gordian knot, which comes to signal the end of the almost peaceful part. I liked very much less the second half, taking place on the run away from the Sweet Mercy monastery, where there are too many coincidences and too many intersections of paths that one wishes the author had gone for this Alexander’s resolution of a Gordian knot himself! I think the plot almost peters out at this stage and only survives by sheer inertia, too many boulders loose at once to all stop at the same time!

“The sky above was a deep maroon, shading towards black, strewn with dark ribbons of cloud that looked like lacerations where jagged peaks tore the heavens.”

The style is sometimes repetitive and sometimes on the heavy side, as the quote above I wish someone has re-read. Despite  the grand (and somewhat nefarious) schemes of Abbess Glass, the story is too homely, which may be why the part “at home” feels more convincing that the part outside. The main villain’s plans for taking power over the whole country and the artificial moon are incredible, unconvincing and definitely sketchy, even when explained in the middle of a royal brawl. However, the continued description of the ice-encased universe, saved from complete freeze by an artificial moon and four nuclear reactors, plus an increasing role of magic, make the background compelling and leave me eager for the final (?) volume in the series.