Expectation Propagation as a Way of Life on-line

After a rather extended shelf-life, our paper expectation propagation as a way of life: a framework for Bayesian inference on partitioned data which was started when Andrew visited Paris in… 2014!, and to which I only marginally contributed, has now appeared in JMLR! Which happens to be my very first paper in this journal.

and it only gets worse [verbatim]

“Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America’s allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy” M. Menezes, US Secretary of Energy

“NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part)” DT,, 7 June

“I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.) [sic], the Prince of Whales [re-sic]” DT, 13 June

“[Sarah Sanders] is going to be leaving the service of her country and she’s going to be going  (…) She’s a very special person, a very, very fine woman, she has been so great, she has such heart, she’s strong but with great, great heart, and I want to thank you for an outstanding job.” DT, 13 June

“…when I asked, ‘How many will die?’ ‘150 people, sir’, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not … proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.” DT, 21 June

“The reason we have tragedies like that on the border is because that father didn’t wait to go through the asylum process in the legal fashion and decided to cross the river and not only died but his daughter died tragically as well,” K. Cuccinelli, head of US Immigration and Citizenship Services, 28 June

“If Japan is attacked, we will fight World War III. But if we’re attacked, Japan doesn’t have to help us at all. They can watch it on a Sony television.” DT, 24 June

reactionaries behind wheels

France was hit by hundreds of blockades yesterday, sometimes with dramatic consequences, as a reaction to the planned ecological tax on gas announced by the French government. As in every occasion French drivers are impacted by new laws or taxes, from reducing the legal speed limit to installing new radars, to tolls for trucks, they react like a Swiss watch, blocking streets and highways, often with success in the end. As in the previous “bonnets rouges” movement (making me wonder why these actions are always connected with clothes!). While being highly privileged to be able to bike to work (or to use the local trains, when they run) and to shop locally, I am struck by the doubly myopic of the protesters, myopy of not seeing the larger picture of the urgent need to cut the addiction to cars  with obvious negative consequences in the short term and myopy of seeing these protests as “spontaneous” and “politically neutral” despite the immediate recuperation by the fringe political parties. And thus hope the French government will hold on that measure (despite its poor record so far in terms of ecological policy).

bad graph of the day

In the plane to Trondheim, I spotted this ludicrous graphical representation of the sales of cars in France during the first trimester of 2012. While the ration “diesel”/”essence” is four to one, the areas and scales of both sets are completely disproportionate! And this is reinforced by the representation of the larger set as a one-fourth disk, hinting at a scale four times larger… (I do not know if Le Monde or the ” comité francais des constructeurs d’automobiles” (CCFA) is responsible but I would suspect Le Monde after checking on the CCFA site… It sounds like Le Monde needs a journalist with better statistical skills.)