delayed & robbed in London [CFE-CMStatistics 2015]

Last Sunday, I gave a talk on delayed acceptance at the 9th International Conference on Computational and Financial Econometrics (CFE 2015), joint with CMStatistics 2015, in London. This was a worthwhile session, with other talks by Matias Quiroz, on subsampling strategies for large data, David Frazier, on our joint paper about the consistency of ABC algorithms, and James Ridgway not on Pima Indians! And with a good-sized audience especially when considering the number of parallel sessions (36!). Earlier that day, I also attended an equally interesting session on the calibration of misspecified Bayesian models including talks by Peter Green [with a potential answer to the difficulty of parameters on the boundaries by adding orthogonal priors on those boundaries] and Julien Stoehr. calibrating composite likelihoods on Gaussian random fields. In the evening I went to a pub I had last visited when my late friend Costas Goutis was still at UCL and later enjoyed a fiery hot rogan josh.

While I could have attended two more sessions the next morning, I took advantage of the nice café in the Gower Street Waterstones to work a few hours with co-authors (and drink a few litres of tea from real teapots). Despite this quite nice overall experience, the 36 parallel session and the 1600 plus attendants at the conference still make wonder at the appeal of such a large conference and at the pertinence of giving a talk in parallel with so many other talks. And on about all aspects of statistics and econometrics. One JSM (or one NIPS) is more than enough! And given that many people only came for delivering their talk, there is very little networking between research teams or mentoring of younger colleagues, as far as I can tell. And no connection with a statistical society (it would be so nice if the RSS annual conference could only attract 1600 people!). Only a “CMStatistics working group” of which I discovered I was listed as a member [and asked for removal, so far with no answer]. Whose goals and actions are unclear, except to support Elsevier journals with special issues apparently constructed on the same pattern as this conference was organised, i.e., by asking people to take care [for free!] of gathering authors on a theme of their choice. And behind this “working group” an equally nebulous structure called ERCIM…

While the “robbed” in the title could be interpreted as wondering at the reason for paying such high registration fees (£250 for very early birds), I actually got robbed of my bicycle while away at the conference. Second bike stolen within a calendar year, quite an achievement! This was an old 1990 mountain bike I had bought in Cornell and carried back to France, in such a poor state that I could not imagine anyone stealing it. Wrong prior, obviously.

thumbleweed [no] news

Just realised today is the second year since my climbing accident and the loss of my right thumb. Even less to say than last anniversary: while it seems almost impossible not to think about it, the handicap is quite minimal. (Actually, the only time I truly forgot about it was when I was ice-climbing in Scotland this January, the difficulty of the [first] climb meaning I had to concentrate on more immediate issues!) Teaching on the blackboard is fine when I use a chalk holder, I just bought a new bike with the easiest change of gears, and except for lacing my running shoes every morning, most chores do not take longer and, as Andrew pointed out in his March+April madness tornament, I can now get away with some missing-body-part jokes!

a week in Oxford

I spent [most of] the past week in Oxford in connection with our joint OxWaSP PhD program, which is supported by the EPSRC, and constitutes a joint Centre of Doctoral Training in  statistical science focussing on data-­intensive environments and large-­scale models. The first cohort of a dozen PhD students had started their training last Fall with the first year spent in Oxford, before splitting between Oxford and Warwick to write their thesis.  Courses are taught over a two week block, with a two day introduction to the theme (Bayesian Statistics in my case), followed by reading, meetings, daily research talks, mini-projects, and a final day in Warwick including presentations of the mini-projects and a concluding seminar.  (involving Jonty Rougier and Robin Ryder, next Friday). This approach by bursts of training periods is quite ambitious in that it requires a lot from the students, both through the lectures and in personal investment, and reminds me somewhat of a similar approach at École Polytechnique where courses are given over fairly short periods. But it is also profitable for highly motivated and selected students in that total immersion into one topic and a large amount of collective work bring them up to speed with a reasonable basis and the option to write their thesis on that topic. Hopefully, I will see some of those students next year in Warwick working on some Bayesian analysis problem!

On a personal basis, I also enjoyed very much my time in Oxford, first for meeting with old friends, albeit too briefly, and second for cycling, as the owner of the great Airbnb place I rented kindly let me use her bike to go around, which allowed me to go around quite freely! Even on a train trip to Reading. As it was a road racing bike, it took me a trip or two to get used to it, especially on the first day when the roads were somewhat icy, but I enjoyed the lightness of it, relative to my lost mountain bike, to the point of considering switching to a road bike for my next bike… I had also some apprehensions with driving at night, which I avoid while in Paris, but got over them until the very last night when I had a very close brush with a car entering from a side road, which either had not seen me or thought I would let it pass. Gave me the opportunity of shouting Oï!

the most expensive baguette ever…!

Goshdarnit! On the way home tonight, I stopped as usual at the bakery nearby and as usual I let my bike outside next to the entrance. Without bothering with locking as it takes me ages to unlock it with the left hand… When I came out a minute later, the bike was gone!!! At least, this did not happened with my borrowed high-range bike in Warwick… And definitely nothing comparable with the jogger being shot nearby on my running route a week ago. But, still, a real bummer. And I cannot even use my Amazon credit to get the new one! (The local deity I had installed a few months ago on the front fork did not have the intended impact. I may have to switch to another creed…)