Posts of the year

Here are the top posts since last August, before the ‘Og goes on a semi-vacation regime. Even though my attempt at news with the pictures from the tornado in Central Park was rather successful, I am pleased to see that my pet project of illustrating simulated annealing on sudokus attracted more attention over the period!

1. Home page 50,619
2. Sudoku via simulated annealing 1,306
3. Tornado in Central Park 998
4. Solution manual to Bayesian Core on-line 953
5. The Search for Certainty 827
6. Top 15 all-timers? 716
7. t-walk on the banana side 592
8. Bayes vs. SAS 570
9. New Le Monde puzzle 556
10. Incoherent inference 547
11. A ridiculous email 524
12. Of black swans and bleak prospects 486
13. About 448
14. Bayesian p-values 420
15. Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R: 415
16. Solution manual for Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R 400
17. t-walk on the wild side 394
18. “Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R” 376
19. Bayes’ Theorem 359
20. “Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R” 358
21. plagiarism exposed! 356
22. Morning visit to The Louvre 352
23. Rites of love and math 306
24. On resolving the Savage-Dickey paradox 299
25. Particle MCMC discussion 280

Maybe the most surprising item is the Morning visit to The Louvre as it is fairly mundane and does not bring much information, only impressions from our quick stroll through the museum… Less surprising is the relative success of the controversial posts like the criticisms of Black Swans and  The Search for Certainty, or of Templeton’s PNAS attack against (Bayeian) inference. And a clear interest in Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R!

Of black swans and bleak prospects

News from ISBA

The June issue of the ISBA Bulletin has just appeared. One piece of information I was looking for is in it, namely that the 2009 DeGroot Prizewinners are Giovanni Parmigiani and Lurdes Inoue for Decision Theory – Principles and Approaches, and Carl Edward Rasmussen and Christopher K.I.Williams for Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning. (I like very much the cover of the second book!) Herbie Lee very kindly highlights my book review (that he calls “a somewhat different article”!) in Bayesian Analysis of Search for Certainty, There is also a farewell note from José Bernardo about the València meetings (to which a “thank you” post-it could have been added!). Plus many other entries…

Discussion paper on Search for Certainty

Following our various comments on Krzysztof Burdzy’s The Search for Certainty, Bayesian Analysis has now published the whole series as a discussion paper. The set of comments by Krzysztof Burdzy of my review is of course the most entertaining. (Some of its ingredients can be found in the earlier posted comments of his, as well as in comments on Andrew Gelman’s blog.) Indeed I strongly suggest reading those comments as some are genuinely hilarious. (I still do not understand, as an aside, why Krzysztof Burdzy values so highly this pretentious book by Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which still ranks 2000th on Amazon… Or maybe the pique at my denomination of vulgarisation is another level of sarcasm!) In conclusion, I think the amount of discussion spent (so far) on Burdzy’s The Search for Certainty is a good enough reply to his question, why did Robert bother to write his review?

A critical assessment now published

The review of Krzysztof Burdzy’s The Search for Certainty has been posted on Bayesian Analysis today. Given the submission date, this makes for an ultrafast acceptance and publishing! Thanks for the editorial team for this speedy processing. The additional comments by Andrew Gelman, Krzysztof Burdzy, and Larry Wasserman should follow soon. I am not sure I will be allowed for a reply to these comments, since they mostly state different opinions rather than facts about the book.

Review in

My revised review of Krzysztof Burdzy’s The Search for Certainty has been accepted by Bayesian Analysis:

Editor's Report on Submission 2010-Jan-27-01-R1 to Bayesian Analysis,
The Search for Certainty: A critical assessment by C. Robert
I am pleased to accept this article for publication. The next step will be to move on to the publication process.

Now, the remaining open question is whether or not Bayesian Analysis will also publish the comments that were posted on Andrew’s blog.