## Easy computation of the Bayes Factor

Posted in Books, Statistics with tags , , , , , on August 21, 2021 by xi'an

“Choosing the ranges has been criticized as introducing subjectivity; however, the key point is that the ranges are given quantitatively and should be justified”

On arXiv, I came across a paper by physicists Dunstan, Crowne, and Drew, on computing the Bayes factor by linear regression. Paper that I found rather hard to read given that the method is never completely spelled out but rather described through some examples (or the captions of figures)… The magical formula (for the marginal likelihood)

$B=(2\pi)^{n/2}L_{\max}\dfrac{\text{Cov}_p}{\prod_{i=1}^n \Delta p_i}$

where n is the parameter dimension, Cov is the Fisher information matrix, and the denominator the volume of a flat prior on an hypercube (!), seems to come for a Laplace approximation. But it depends rather crucially (!) on the choice of this volume. A severe drawback the authors evacuate with the above quote… And by using an example where the parameters have a similar meaning under both models. The following ones compare several dimensions of parameters without justifying (enough) the support of the corresponding priors. In addition, using a flat prior over the hypercube seems to clash with the existence of a (Fisher) correlation between the components. (To be completely open as to why I discuss this paper, I was asked to review the paper, which I declined.)

## accelerating MCMC

Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 11, 2018 by xi'an

As forecasted a rather long while ago (!), I wrote a short and incomplete survey on some approaches to accelerating MCMC. With the massive help of Victor Elvira (Lille), Nick Tawn (Warwick) and Changye Wu (Dauphine). Survey which current version just got arXived and which has now been accepted by WIREs Computational Statistics. The typology (and even the range of methods) adopted here is certainly mostly arbitrary, with suggestions for different divisions made by a very involved and helpful reviewer. While we achieved a quick conclusion to the review process, suggestions and comments are most welcome! Even if we cannot include every possible suggestion, just like those already made on X validated. (WIREs stands for Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews and its dozen topics cover several fields, from computational stats to biology, to medicine, to engineering.)

## [Royal] Series B’log

Posted in Books, Statistics, University life, Wines with tags , , , , , , on September 12, 2016 by xi'an

[Thanks to Ingmar for suggesting the additional Royal!]

Last week, I got an email from Piotr Fryzlewicz on behalf of the Publication Committee of the Royal Statistical Society enquiring about my interest in becoming a blog associate editor for Series B! Although it does not come exactly as a surprise, as I had previously heard about this interest in creating a dedicated blog, this is great news as I think a lively blog can only enhance the visibility and impact of papers published in Series B and hence increase the influence of Series B. Being quite excited by this on-line and interactive extension to the journal, I have accepted the proposal and we are now working on designing the new blog (Series B’log!) to get it on track as quickly as possible.

Suggestions towards this experiment are most welcome! I am thinking of involving authors to write blog summaries of their paper, AEs and reviewers to voice their expert opinions about the paper, anonymously or not, and of course anyone interested in commenting the paper. The idea is to turn (almost) all papers into on-line Read Papers, with hopefully the backup of authors through their interactions with the commentators. I certainly do not intend to launch discussions on each and every paper, betting on the AEs or referees to share their impressions. And if a paper ends up being un-discussed, this may prove enough of an incentive for some. (Someone asked me if we intended to discuss rejected papers as well. This is an interesting concept, but not to be considered at the moment!)

## “an outstanding paper that covers the Jeffreys-Lindley paradox”…

Posted in Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , on December 4, 2013 by xi'an

“This is, in this revised version, an outstanding paper that covers the Jeffreys-Lindley paradox (JLP) in exceptional depth and that unravels the philosophical differences between different schools of inference with the help of the JLP. From the analysis of this paradox, the author convincingly elaborates the principles of Bayesian and severity-based inferences, and engages in a thorough review of the latter’s account of the JLP in Spanos (2013).” Anonymous

I have now received a second round of reviews of my paper, “On the Jeffreys-Lindleys paradox” (submitted to Philosophy of Science) and the reports are quite positive (or even extremely positive as in the above quote!). The requests for changes are directed to clarify points, improve the background coverage, and simplify my heavy style (e.g., cutting Proustian sentences). These requests were easily addressed (hopefully to the satisfaction of the reviewers) and, thanks to the week in Warwick, I have already sent the paper back to the journal, with high hopes for acceptance. The new version has also been arXived. I must add that some parts of the reviews sounded much better than my original prose and I was almost tempted to include them in the final version. Take for instance

“As a result, the reader obtains not only a better insight into what is at stake in the JLP, going beyond the results of Spanos (2013) and Sprenger (2013), but also a much better understanding of the epistemic function and mechanics of statistical tests. This is a major achievement given the philosophical controversies that have haunted the topic for decades. Recent insights from Bayesian statistics are integrated into the article and make sure that it is mathematically up to date, but the technical and foundational aspects of the paper are well-balanced.” Anonymous

## in praise of the referee (or not)

Posted in Statistics, University life with tags , , , , on April 5, 2013 by xi'an

While I was editing our “famous” In praise of the referee paper—well, famous for being my most rejected paper ever!, with one editor not even acknowledging receipt!!—for the next edition of the ISBA Bulletin—where it truly belongs, being in fine a reply to Larry’s tribune therein a while ago—, Dimitris Politis had written a column for the IMS Bulletin—March 2013 Issue, page 11—on Refereeing and psychoanalysis.

Uh?! What?! Psychoanalysis?! Dimitris’ post is about referees being rude or abusive in their report, expressing befuddlement at seeing such behaviour in a scientific review. If one sets aside cases of personal and ideological antagonisms—always likely to occur in academic circles!—, a “good” reason for referees to get aggressively annoyed to the point of rudeness is sloppiness of one kind or another in the paper under review. One has to remember that refereeing is done for free and with no clear recognition in the overwhelming majority of cases, out of a sense of duty to the community and of fairness for having our own papers refereed. Reading a paper where typos abound, where style is so abstruse as to hide the purpose of the work, where the literature is so poorly referenced as to make one doubts the author(s) ever read another paper, the referee may feel vindicated by venting his/her frustration at wasting one’s time by writing a few vitriolic remarks.  Dimitris points out this can be very detrimental to young researchers. True, but what happened to the advisor at this stage?! Wasn’t she/he supposed to advise her/his PhD student not only in conducting innovative research but also in producing intelligible outcome and in preparing papers suited for the journal it is to be submitted to..?! Being rude and aggressive does not contribute to improve the setting, no more than headbutting an Italian football player helps in winning the World Cup, but it may nonetheless be understood without resorting to psychoanalysis!

Most interestingly, this negative aspect of refereeing—that can be curbed by posterior actions of AEs and editors—would vanish if some of our proposals were implemented, incl. making referee’ reports part of the referee’s publication list, making those reports public as comments on the published paper (if published), and creating repositories or report commons independent from journals…