Χ on stage

A screen-shot of the video taken during my talk in Hong Kong (restricted to 2013 WSC attendants, I am afraid. Or not.), where I happened to be wearing my favourite (and only) Scotland rugby shirt with prominent  Χ labels…

2013 WSC, Hong Kong

After an early but taxing morning run overlooking the city, and a recovery breakfast (!), I went from my flat to the nearby Hong Kong Convention Centre where the ISI (2013 WSC) meeting is taking place. I had a few chats with friends and publishers (!), then read a chapter of Rissanen’s book over an iced coffee before attending the Bernoulli session. This was a fairly unusual session with a mix of history of probability, philosophy of probability and statistics, and computational issues (my talk). Edith Sylla gave some arguments as to why Ars Conjectandi (that she translated) was the first probability book ever. Krzys Burdzy defended his perspective on why von Mises and de Finetti were wrong (in their foundational views of statistics). And I gave my talk on a mixture of Bernoulli factory, Russian roulette and ABC  (After my talk, Victor Perez Abreu told me that Jakob Bernoulli had presumably used simulation to evaluate the variance of the empirical mean in the Bernoulli case.) What I found most interesting in the historical talk was that Bernoulli had proven his result in the late 1680’s but he waited to complete his book on moral and commercial issues, waited too long since he died before. This reminded me of Hume using probabilistic arguments a few years later to disprove the existence of miracles. And of Price waiting for Bayes’ theorem to counter Hume. The talk by Krzys was a quick summary of the views exposed in his book, which unsurprisingly did not convince me that von Mises and de Finetti (a) had failed and (b) needed to use a new set of (six) axioms to define probability. I often reflected on the fact that when von Mises and de Finetti state(d) that probability does not exist, they applied the argument to a single event and this does not lead to a paradox in my opinion. Anyway, this talk of Krzys’ induced most of the comments from the floor, my own talk being in fine too technical to fit in this historical session. (And then there was still some time to get to a tea shop in Sheng Wan to buy some Pu Ehr, if not the HK$3000 variety…!)

Hong Kong snapshot

Hong Kong addresses (by Le Monde)

Here are a few addresses given to Le Monde Magazine travel guide by a local writer Roselyne Durand-Ruel (in the same spirit as Oxford, Miss., I mentioned a while ago!), in case you are attending ISI…:

1/ Bar Sevva’s 25e étage, Prince’s building, 10, Chater Road, Central

2/ Restaurant Tung Po Sea Food 2e étage, Cooked Food Centre, 99, Java Road, North Point. Tél. : (00-852)-28-80-52-24

3/ Centre culturel The Asia Society 9, Justice Drive, Admiralty. Tél. : (00-852)-21-03-95-11

4/ Maison de thé Lock Cha Upper Ground Floor, 290B, Queen’s Road, Central, Sheung Wan www.lockcha.com

5/ Restaurant Island Tang Shop222, The Galleria, 9, Queen’s Road, Central. Tél. : (00-852)-25-26-87-98

6/ Restaurant Tim Ho Wan 2-20 Kwong Wa Street, Mong Kok. Tél. : (00-852)23-32-28-96 [one star Michelin dim sums!]

from Jakob Bernoulli to Hong Kong

Here are my slides (or at least the current version thereof) for my talk in Hong Kong at the 2013 (59th ISI) World Statistical Congress.  (I stopped embedding my slideshare links in the posts as they freeze my broswer. I wonder if anyone else experiences the same behaviour.)

This talk will feature in the History I: Jacob Bernoulli’s “Ars Conjectandi” and the emergence of probability invited paper session organised by Adam Jakubowski. While my own research connection with Bernoulli is at most tenuous, besides using the Law of Large Numbers and Bernoulli rv’s…,  I [of course!] borrowed from earlier slides on our vanilla Rao-Blackwellisation paper (if only  because of the Bernoulli factory connection!) and ask Mark Girolami for his Warwick slides on the Russian roulette (another Bernoulli factory connection!), before recycling my Budapest slides on ABC. The other talks in the session are by Edith Dudley Sylla on Ars Conjectandi and by Krzys Burdzy on his book The Search for Certainty. Book that I critically reviewed in Bayesian Analysis. This will be the first time I meet Krzys in person and I am looking forward to the opportunity!