Scott Sisson’s ABC seminar in Paris [All about that Bayes]

On the “All about that Bayes” seminar tomorrow (Tuesday 21 at 3p.m., room 42, AgroParisTech, 16 rue Claude Bernard, Paris 5ième), Scott Sisson, School of Mathematics and Statistics at UNSW, and visiting Paris-Dauphine this month, will give a talk on

Approximate posteriors and data for Bayesian inference

Abstract
For various reasons, including large datasets and complex models, approximate inference is becoming increasingly common. In this talk I will provide three vignettes of recent work. These cover a) approximate Bayesian computation for Gaussian process density estimation, b) likelihood-free Gibbs sampling, and c) MCMC for approximate (rounded) data.

maths & AI

ABC in Grenoble, 19-20 March 2020 [registration open]

Reminding readers that the next occurrence of the “ABC in…” workshops will very soon take place in Grenoble, France, on 19-20 March 2020. Confirmed speakers and sessions (with more to come) are

Misspecified models

• Guillaume Dehaene (EPFL, Switzerland) TBA
• Gael Martin (Monash University, Australia) Focused Bayesian Prediction
• Tommaso Rigon (Duke University, USA) TBA

Links with Machine Learning

• Flora Jay (Université d’Orsay, France) TBA
• Pierre-Alexandre Mattei (Inria Sophia Antipolis – Méditerranée, France) Partially Exchangeable Networks and Architectures for Learning Summary Statistics in Approximate Bayesian Computation
• Dennis Prangle (Newcastle University, UK) Scalable approximate inference for state space models with normalising flows

As in most earlier versions of the “ABC in…”workshops (ABC in Paris, London, Roma, &tc.), we are aiming at a workshop atmosphere and, thanks to local sponsors, the registration fees are null, but registration is compulsory. And now open!

I also remind ‘Og’s readers that Grenoble can be easily reached by fast trains from Paris, Roissy, Geneva and Lyon. (There are also flights to Grenoble airport from Warwick, as well as Bristol, Edinburgh, London, Manchester, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Warsaw, but this is less convenient than flying to Lyon Saint-Exupery airport and then catching a direct train at the airport.) To add to the appeal of the place, the workshop occurs during the skiing season, with three mountain ranges in the close vicinity. Making ABski a genuine possibility for the weekend after!

freedom for women jailed in Iran

Three women are currently on hunger strike in Iranian jails to protest against their arbitrary detention under espionage charges and the dire conditions of these detentions. Two of them, Fariba Adelkhah and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, are dual nationals with Iranian nationality, whose second nationality is not recognised by Iranian authorities and makes their release from jail the more unlikely. On the French side, Fariba Adelkhah, anthropologist, along with Roland Marchal, sociologist, is a researcher at Sciences Po Paris. They were arrested in June 2019. On the British side, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (jailed in April 2016) is working with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the Canadian news agency Thomson Reuters‘ charitable arm and Kylie Moore-Gilbert (jailed since October 2018) is a  Middle East Lecturer at the University of Melbourne‘s Asia Institute. Petitions have been launched to support them, but I wonder at the possibility to move the Iranian cynical stance other than through the respective governments of these women. (Obviously, there are many many other women and men jailed in Iran for political or other discriminatory reasons who should equally be freed.)

 

repulsive postdoc!

Rémi Bardenet has been awarded an ERC grant on Monte Carlo integration via repulsive point processes and is now looking for a postdoc starting next March. (Our own ABSINT ANR grant still has an open offer of a postdoctoral position on approximate Bayesian methods, feel free to contact me if potentially interested.)

no bull: corrida de thiais [5km, 19:36, 44/432, 1/18 M4H]

fake maths on the ceiling [jatp]