RSS conference in Newcastle

Although I could not stay at the RSS Annual Conference for the three days, I would have liked to do so, as there were several interesting sessions, from MCMC talks by Axel Finke, Din-Houn Lau, Anthony Lee and Michael Betancourt, to the session on Anti-fragility, the concept produced by Nassim Taleb in his latest book (reviewed before completion by Larry Wasserman). I find it rather surprising that the RSS is dedicating a whole session to this, but the usually anti-statistic stance of Taleb (esp. in The Black Swan) may explain for it (and the equally surprising debate between a “pro-Taleb” and a “pro-Silver”. I will also miss Sharon McGrayne‘s talk on the Bayesian revolution, but look forward to hear it at the Bayes-250 day in Duke next December. And I could have certainly benefited from the training session about building a package in R. It seemed, however, that one-day attendance was a choice made by many participants to the conference, judging from the ability to register for one or two days and from the (biased) sample of my friends.

Incidentally, the conference gave me the opportunity to discover Newcastle and Tynemouth, enjoying the architecture of Grey Street and running on the huge meadows almost at the city centre, among herds of cows in the morning fog. (I wish I had had more time to reach the neighbourly Hadrian wall and Durham, that I only spotted from the train to B’ham!)