a jump back in time

As the Department of Statistics in Warwick is slowly emptying its shelves and offices for the big migration to the new building that is almost completed, books and documents are abandoned in the corridors and the work spaces. On this occasion, I thus happened to spot a vintage edition of the Valencia 3 proceedings. I had missed this meeting and hence the volume for, during the last year of my PhD, I was drafted in the French Navy and as a result prohibited to travel abroad. (Although on reflection I could have safely done it with no one in the military the wiser!) Reading through the papers thirty years later is a weird experience, as I do not remember most of the papers, the exception being the mixture modelling paper by José Bernardo and Javier Giròn which I studied a few years later when writing the mixture estimation and simulation paper with Jean Diebolt. And then again in our much more recent non-informative paper with Clara Grazian.  And Prem Goel’s survey of Bayesian software. That is, 1987 state of the art software. Covering an amazing eighteen list. Including versions by Zellner, Tierney, Schervish, Smith [but no MCMC], Jaynes, Goldstein, Geweke, van Dijk, Bauwens, which apparently did not survive the ages till now. Most were in Fortran but S was also mentioned. And another version of Tierney, Kass and Kadane on Laplace approximations. And the reference paper of Dennis Lindley [who was already retired from UCL at that time!] on the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. And another paper by Don Rubin on using SIR (Rubin, 1983) for simulating from posterior distributions with missing data. Ten years before the particle filter paper, and apparently missing the possibility of weights with infinite variance.

There already were some illustrations of Bayesian analysis in action, including one by Jay Kadane reproduced in his book. And several papers by Jim Berger, Tony O’Hagan, Luis Pericchi and others on imprecise Bayesian modelling, which was in tune with the era, the imprecise probability book by Peter Walley about to appear. And a paper by Shaw on numerical integration that mentioned quasi-random methods. Applied to a 12 component Normal mixture.Overall, a much less theoretical content than I would have expected. And nothing about shrinkage estimators, although a fraction of the speakers had worked on this topic most recently.

At a less fundamental level, this was a time when LaTeX was becoming a standard, as shown by a few papers in the volume (and as I was to find when visiting Purdue the year after), even though most were still typed on a typewriter, including a manuscript addition by Dennis Lindley. And Warwick appeared as a Bayesian hotpot!, with at least five papers written by people there permanently or on a long term visit. (In case a local is interested in it, I have kept the volume, to be found in my new office!)

Bayesian statistics in the big data era

In conjunction with Kerrie Mengersen’ Jean Morlet Chair at CIRM, Luminy, Marseilles, we organise a special conference “Bayesian statistics in the big data era” on November 26-30, 2018, with the following speakers having already confirmed attendance

Louis Aslett (Durham, UK)
Sudipto Banerjee (UCLA, US)
Tamara Broderick (MIT, US)
Noël Cressie (Wollongong, OZ)
Marco Cuturi (ENSAE, FR)
David Dunson (Duke, US)
Sylvia Frühwirth-Schnatter (WU, AU)
Amy Herring (Duke, US)
Gregor Kastner (WU, AU)
Ruth King (Edinburgh, UK)

Gary Koop (Edinburgh, UK)
Antonio Lijoi (Bocconi, IT)
Jean-Michel Marin (Montpellier, FR)
Antonietta Mira (Lugano, CH)
Peter Müller (UT Austin, US)
Igor Pruenster (Bocconi, IT)
Stéphane Robin (INRA, FR)
Heejung Shim (U Melbourne, OZ)
Minh-Ngoc Tran (UNSW, OZ)
Darren Wilkinson (Newcastle, UK)

(more)

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Registration is free but compulsory, and we encourage all interested data scientists (and beyond) to apply and to contribute a talk or a poster. The size of the audience is limited to a maximum of 80 participants, on a first-come first-serve basis. (Cheap housing is available on the campus, located in the gorgeous national park des Calanques south of Marseilles.)

In connection with this conference, there will be a workshop the previous weekend on “Young Bayesians and Big Data for social good”, to get junior researchers interested in the analysis of data related with social issues and human rights to work with a few senior researchers. More details soon, here and on the CIRM website.

Masterclass in Bayesian Statistics in Marseilles next Fall

This post is to announce a second occurrence of the exciting “masterclass in Bayesian Statistics” that we organised in 2016, near Marseilles. It will take place on 22-26 October 2018 once more at CIRM (Centre International de Recherches Mathématiques, Luminy, Marseilles, France). The targeted audience includes all scientists interested in learning how Bayesian inference may be used to tackle the practical problems they face in their own research. In particular PhD students and post-docs should benefit most directly from this masterclass. Among the invited speakers, Kerrie Mengersen from QUT, Brisbane, visiting Marseilles this Fall, will deliver a series of lectures on the interface between Bayesian statistics and applied modelling, Havard Rue from KAUST will talk on computing with INLA, and Aki Vehtari from Aalto U, Helsinki, will give a course on Bayesian model assessment and model choice. There will be two tutorials on R and on Stan.

All interested participants in this masterclass should pre-register as early as possible, given that the total attendance is limited to roughly 90 participants. Some specific funding for local expenses (i.e., food + accommodation on-siteat CIRM) is available (thanks to CIRM, and potentially to Fondation Jacques Hadamard, to be confirmed); this funding will be attributed by the scientific committee, with high priority to PhD students and post-docs.

ABC and ISBA in Edinburgh [early registration deadline]

Just a reminder that the deadline for early registration at ISBA 2018, and hence at the satellite workshop ABC in Edinburgh, since there is alas no separate access to the later, is drawing near! Given the already rather sharp rates of £380 for ISBA members and £250 at this time, and the incoming rise (to plummet at $1,1000 for registering on site!!), it would be advised to register prior to April 15, if you intend to attend…

(Disclaimer: I am not part of the organising committee of either event. And I have already written several posts here and there complaining on the absurd inflation of conference fees.)

 

five postdoc positions in top UK universities & Bayesian health data science

The EPSRC programme New Approaches to Bayesian Data Science: Tackling Challenges from the Health Sciences, directed by Paul Fearnhead, is offering five 3 or 4 year PDRA positions at the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Lancaster, Oxford, and Warwick. Here is the complete call:

Salary:   £29,799 to £38,833
Closing Date:   Thursday 26 April 2018
Interview Date:   Friday 11 May 2018

We invite applications for Post-Doctoral Research Associates to join the New Approaches to Bayesian Data Science: Tackling Challenges from the Health Sciences programme. This is an exciting, cross-disciplinary research project that will develop new methods for Bayesian statistics that are fit-for-purpose to tackle contemporary Health Science challenges: such as real-time inference and prediction for large scale epidemics; or synthesizing information from distinct data sources for large scale studies such as the UK Biobank. Methodological challenges will be around making Bayesian methods scalable to big-data and robust to (unavoidable) model errors.

This £3M programme is funded by EPSRC, and brings together research groups from the Universities of Lancaster, Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford and Warwick. There is either a 4 or a 3 year position available at each of these five partner institutions.

You should have, or be close to completing, a PhD in Statistics or a related discipline. You will be experienced in one or more of the following areas: Bayesian statistics, computational statistics, statistical machine learning, statistical genetics, inference for epidemics. You will have demonstrated the ability to develop new statistical methodology. We are particularly keen to encourage applicants with strong computational skills, and are looking to put together a team of researchers with skills that cover theoretical, methodological and applied statistics. A demonstrable ability to produce academic writing of the highest publishable quality is essential.

Applicants must apply through Lancaster University’s website for the Lancaster, Oxford, Bristol and Warwick posts.  Please ensure you state clearly which position or positions you wish to be considered for when applying. For applications to the MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge vacancy please go to their website.

Candidates who are considering making an application are strongly encouraged to contact Professor Paul Fearnhead (p.fearnhead@lancaster.ac.uk), Sylvia Richardson (sylvia.richardson@mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk), Christophe Andrieu (c.andrieu@bristol.ac.uk), Chris Holmes (c.holmes@stats.ox.ac.uk) or Gareth Roberts (Gareth.O.Roberts@warwick.ac.uk) to discuss the programme in greater detail.

We welcome applications from people in all diversity groups.

 

annual visit to Oxford

As in every year since 2014, I am spending a few days in Oxford to teach a module on Bayesian Statistics to our Oxford-Warwick PhD students. This time I was a wee bit under the weather due to a mild case of food poisoning and I can only hope that my more than sedate delivery did not turn definitely the students away from Bayesian pursuits!

The above picture is at St. Hugh’s College, where I was staying. Or should it be Saint Hughes, since this 12th century bishop was a pre-Brexit European worker from Avalon, France… (This college was created in 1886 for young women of poorer background. And only opened to male students a century later. The 1924 rules posted in one corridor show how these women were considered to be so “dangerous” by the institution that they had to be kept segregated from men, except their brothers!, at all times…)

València summer school

In another continuation of the summer of Bayesian conferences in Europe, the Universidat de Valencià is organising a summer school on Bayesian statistics, from 16 July till 20 July, 2018. Which thus comes right after our summer school on computational statistics at Warwick. With a basic course on Bayesian learning (2 days). And a more advanced course on Bayesian modeling with BayesX. And a final day workshop.