mixtures at BNP [slides]

After chatting with some BNP13 participants at the Puerto Montt airport, I gave in (!) to their kind request to put my slides on-line and here is the link to the slideshare depository. It was quite the nice coincidence that Sanjib Basu (whom I met in Purdue in 1987!) gave the invited talk in our session since we were building on the under-appreciated Basu-Chib approximation of the evidence. Overall, this was an exhilarating week and I now have to recover from this sensory overload. (Incidentally, and uninterestingly, I got swindled by not one but two taxis on my way back to Santiago!)

Testing for mixtures at BNP 13 from Christian Robert

a senseless taxi-ride

This morning, on my way to the airport (and to Montpellier for a seminar), Rock, my favourite taxi-driver, told me of a strange ride he endured the night before, so strange that he had not yet fully got over it! As it happened, he had picked an elderly lady with two large bags in the vicinity after a radio-call and drove her to a sort of catholic hostel in down-town Paris, near La Santé jail, a pastoral place housing visiting nuns and priests. However, when they arrived there, she asked the taxi to wait before leaving, quite appropriately as she had apparently failed to book the place. She then asked my friend to take her to another specific address, an hotel located nearby at Denfert-Rochereau. While Rock was waiting and the taxi counter running, the passenger literally checked in by visiting the hotel room and deciding she did not like it so she gave my taxi yet another hotel address near Saint-Honoré where she repeated the same process, namely visited the hotel room with the same outcome that she did not like the place. My friend was then getting worried about the meaning of this processionary trip all over Paris, the more because the lady did not have a particularly coherent discourse. And could not stop talking. The passenger then made him stop for food and drink, and, while getting back in the taxi, ordered him to drive her back to her starting place. After two hours and half, they thus came back to the place, with a total bill of 113 euros. The lady then handled a 100 euro bill to the taxi-driver, declaring she did not have any further money and that he should have brought her home directly from the first place they had stopped… In my friend’s experience, this was the weirdest passenger he ever carried and he thought the true point of the ride was to escape solitude and loneliness for one evening, even if chatting about non-sense the whole time.

a week in Warwick

This past week in Warwick has been quite enjoyable and profitable, from staying once again in a math house, to taking advantage of the new bike, to having several long discussions on several prospective and exciting projects, to meeting with some of the new postdocs and visitors, to attending Tony O’Hagan’s talk on “wrong models”. And then having Simo Särkkä who was visiting Warwick this week discussing his paper with me. And Chris Oates doing the same with his recent arXival with Mark Girolami and Nicolas Chopin (soon to be commented, of course!). And managing to run in dry conditions despite the heavy rains (but in pitch dark as sunrise is now quite late, with the help of a headlamp and the beauty of a countryside starry sky). I also evaluated several students’ projects, two of which led me to wonder when using RJMCMC was appropriate in comparing two models. In addition, I also eloped one evening to visit old (1977!) friends in Northern Birmingham, despite fairly dire London Midlands performances between Coventry and Birmingham New Street, the only redeeming feature being that the connecting train there was also late by one hour! (Not mentioning the weirdest taxi-driver ever on my way back, trying to get my opinion on whether or not he should have an affair… which at least kept me awake the whole trip!) Definitely looking forward my next trip there at the end of November.