Bayesian biostatistics in Lyon 2019

from Arthur’s Seat [spot ISBA participants]

deaths at sea and a workshop

For several years, actually from the beginning of the Syrian revolution, I have been looking for data and for statisticians working on migrant deaths resulting from crossing the Mediterranean. With very little success, either because the researchers I met had poor and fragmented data, or because the agencies I contacted showed no (good) will into returning these statistics. Frontex being the most blatant example. I thus read with a lot of interest this article “Uncounted: Invisible Deaths on Europe’s Borders” which analyses the reasons for not producing statistics on the deaths at sea linked with desperate migrants crossing the sea in ill-suited boats.

In connection with this pressing issue, Kerrie Mengersen, Pierre Pudlo and myself organise next November a small workshop on Young Bayesians and Big Data for social good, at CIRM, Marseille, France. It will take place on the weekend before our main conference, Bayesian statistics in the Big Data era, that is, on 23-26 November 2018. Registration is free (and on site accomodation is cheap) but the number of attendees is limited, so apply asap! Senior participants include at this stage Tamara Broderick (MIT), Julien Cornebise (Element AI, TBC), David Corliss (Peace Work), Ruth King (Edinburgh), Cody Ross (UCSD, TBC), and the workshop aims at bringing participants to work together on methodological challenges and characteristic datasets. The outcome of the workshop will be presented at the beginning of the Bayesian statistics in the Big Data era, conference, on Monday 26 November.

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.

a summer of British conferences!

Mahalanobis at the bus-stop [jatp]

Two bus-stops around the Indian Statistical Institute, featuring its founder, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis.

 

back to Kolkata [শুভ নব বর্ষ]

With high probability (!), I am off to Kolkata tonight, almost an exact year after I visited the city and the Department of Statistics of the University of Kolkata. On this occasion, I will attend a conference celebrating the 125th birthday of Mahalanobis and be staying at the Indian Statistical Institute, in another part of the city. Although I will only stay there for three days, I am looking forward meeting old friends and new faces, enjoying Bengali food and replenishing my reserves of Darjeeling tea. Shubho Nabobarsho (Happy New Year in Bengali)! As in the previous trip, I was also invited at a second conference at the Indian Association For Productivity, Quality & Reliability, on New Paradigms in Statistics for Scientific and Industrial Research, but decided against talking there for fear of being stuck for hours in the infamous Kolkata traffic.