Core not in CiRM
Despite not enjoying this year the optimal environment of CiRM, we are still making good progress on the revision (or the R vision) of Bayesian Core. In the past two days, we went over Chapters 1 (Introduction), 2 (Normal Models), 5 (Capture-Recapture Experiments), and 6 (Mixture Models), with Chapters 3 (Regression), 4 (Generalised Linear Models) and 9 (Image Analysis) being close to completion. While having a “last”go at the R tutorial part of Chapter 1, I came across this paragraph
One of the most frustrating features of R is that the graphical device is not refreshed while a program is executed in the main window. This implies that, if you switch from one terminal to another or if the screen saver starts, the whole or parts of the graph currently on the graphical device will not be visible until the completion of the program. Conversely, refreshing very large graphs will delay the activation of the prompt >.
that I very gladly deleted, as the current 2.11.1 version of R does no longer suffer from this painful freeze in the graphics (at least on my Kubuntu 10.10 version).
Actually, I do not think I mentioned it in a previous post: our new edition will be called Bayesian Essentials with R. Both to distinguish it from Bayesian Core (as it should be published in the Use R! series) and because it appeared (thanks to colleagues and readers) that core did not sound very appealing to English-speaking audiences looking for a statistics book…
Xi'an's Og 
January 19, 2012 at 12:17 am
[…] of Bayesian Core on which Jean-Michel Marin and I worked most of last week, having missed our CIRM break last summer, we have now included an illustration of what happens to an AR(p) time series when the […]
January 16, 2012 at 12:12 am
[…] working with Jean-Michel Marin on the revision of Bayesian Core, and more specifically on the time series chapter, I was wondering about the […]
August 2, 2011 at 10:53 am
[…] than earlier. (It also made me wonder whether or not we should incorporate some of this approach in Bayesian Core, sorry Bayesian Essentials with R, presumably not because we are aiming at a lower […]
July 29, 2011 at 9:14 am
To be honest, I had a really tough time with Bayesian core, which I bought quite a while back. I gave up on it. I think the outsider to statistics needs more books like the Doing Bayesian Data Analysis book by Kruschke. You should write them, Christian ;-).
July 29, 2011 at 9:45 am
The real question is, should the “outsider to statistics” try to study (Bayesian) statistics without the proper math and probability background? My answer, as you may guess, is no. Bayesian Core may appear too hard to outsiders, but it constitutes in my opinion the core of what one should know about Bayesian statistics… And the prerequisites also are the core of what one should know to go beyond the statistical-software-user level.
July 28, 2011 at 8:21 pm
R 2.11.1 is current?
2.13.1 is current. Dev is 2.14. Enormous changes all over the place, not least of which is a graphics device based on Cairo which can generate vastly more elegant plots (cf. ggplot2 alpha blending, for example).
The latter is not a trivial point, as ggplot2 seems to be fast becoming a standard for snappy figures. Might be worthwhile to revisit some plots in light of its deceptively simple power.
Looking forward to the updated edition.
July 28, 2011 at 11:16 pm
Just get a look at “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it!” to understand my position!