Just learned this day that Professor A. K. Md. Ehsanes Saleh passed away in early September. I first met him sometimes in the Fall of 1987, while visiting (from Purdue where I was visiting professor) my wife in Ottawa (where she was pursuing a Master in Electrical Engineering). I knew of his papers on shrinkage and pre-test estimators and dropped by Carleton University, where he taught and worked most of his life, for a casual talk. He was incredibly welcoming and friendly to an unknown junior researcher who had dropped by with no warning on a Friday afternoon. We then kept in touch about research projects and he made me an offer to visit Carleton over the Summer of 1988, with a welcome financial support that allowed us to rent a better lodging by the University of Ottawa (which my wife kept for the following year). This suited me most perfectly as I could spend the summer (May-August) with my wife and work with Professor Saleh on shrinkage topics, which was most enjoyable (if not immensely innovative), although the move involved a non-stop 14h drive from West Lafayette to Ottawa! The whole group of statisticians and probabilists at Carleton was unbelievably friendly as well and contributed, along with the stressless atmosphere of the Canadian capital and the endless nearby parks, to make that summer of 1988 a fabulous one. We renewed the experiment the following summer of 1989, when I left Cornell at the end of their semester, again a great one, when I also met Tatsuya Kubokawa who was visiting Professor Saleh as well. After those two years, I had very few opportunities to visit Ottawa and hence to meet him again, even though I remember having lunch with him at a Franco-Canadian meeting in 2008. I do and will remember him as a humble and selfless man, despite his accomplishments of being the first Bangladeshi statistician in receiving many awards and distinctions, always amicable and full of tolerance and helpful advice.
Archive for SFDS
A. K. Md. Ehsanes Saleh (01 Jan 1932 – 03 Sept 2023)
Posted in Books, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags A. K. Md. Ehsanes Saleh, Bangladesh, book reviews, Canada, Carleton University, Cornell University, James-Stein estimator, obituary, Ottawa, Purdue University, ridge regression, SFDS, shrinkage estimation, SSC, West Lafayette on December 10, 2023 by xi'ana random day, in Paris
Posted in Statistics, University life with tags conference, IHP, Institut Henri Poincaré, journée aléatoire, probability theory, SFDS, SMAI, SMF, statistical inference, Statistics on September 28, 2022 by xi'anCOMPUTO, the journal for reproducible statistical research
Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags academic journals, Computo, logo, non-reproducible research, notebook, open and free access, PCI Comput Stats, reproducibility, Rmarkdown, SFDS, Société française de Statistique on February 15, 2022 by xi'anComputo (latin for calculate, compute, reckon) is a new journal launched by the French statistical society (SFDS) to promote reproducible research in statistics and machine learning by publishing papers with reproducible contributions. Towards this goal, Computo goes beyond classical static publications by including technical advances in literate programming and scientific reporting. The reproducibility of numerical results is a necessary condition for publication in Computo. In particular, submissions must include all necessary data (e.g. via zenodo repositories) and code. For contributions featuring the implementation of methods/algorithms, the quality of the provided code is assessed during the review process. Meaning accepting contributions in the form of notebooks (e.g. Rmarkdown, or Jupyter). This is a 100% free and open-access journal, thanks to the sponsoring of the SFDS. Once a manuscript is accepted, its reviews will be made available on the Computo website. Reviewers can choose to remain anonymous or not. (Towards an even broader reach, we are now considering a partnership with the PCI, following an earlier attempt I did not pursue till its completion…) Computo’s logo has been designed by Loïc Schwaller. And represents the letters of Computo in bytes. Submissions are now open!
ateliers statistiques bayésiens
Posted in Statistics with tags ABC, computational Bayesian methods, IHP, Institut Henri Poincaré, rStan, SFDS, Société française de Statistique, STAN on July 18, 2019 by xi'anThe French Statistical Association is running a training workshop on practical computational Bayesian methods on 10-12 September 2019 in Paris (IHP), animated by Sylvain LE CORFF (Telecom SudParis – Institut Polytechnique de Paris) for the initiation to « rstan », by Matthieu AUTHIER (Université de La Rochelle).
non-uniform Laplace generation
Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags Bible code, Canada, France, McGill University, Montréal, Nancy, Non-Uniform Random Variate Generation, prize, Québec, SFDS on June 5, 2019 by xi'anThis year, the French Statistical Society (SFDS) Prix Laplace has been granted to Luc Devroye, author of the Non-Uniform Random Generation bible. among many achievements!, prize that he will receive during the 2019 meeting in Nancy, this very week.