## absint[he] post-doc on approximate Bayesian inference in Paris, Montpellier and Oxford

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 18, 2019 by xi'an

As a consequence of its funding by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) in 2018, the ABSint research conglomerate is now actively recruiting a post-doctoral collaborator for up to 24 months. The accronym ABSint stands for Approximate Bayesian solutions for inference on large datasets and complex models. The ABSint conglomerate involves researchers located in Paris, Saclay, Montpelliers, as well as Lyon, Marseille, Nice. This call seeks candidates with an excellent research record and who are interested to collaborate with local researchers on approximate Bayesian techniques like ABC, variational Bayes, PAC-Bayes, Bayesian non-parametrics, scalable MCMC, and related topics. A potential direction of research would be the derivation of new Bayesian tools for model checking in such complex environments. The post-doctoral collaborator will be primarily located in Université Paris-Dauphine, with supported periods in Oxford and visits to Montpellier. No teaching duty is attached to this research position.

Applications can be submitted in either English or French. Sufficient working fluency in English is required. While mastering some French does help with daily life in France (!), it is not a prerequisite. The candidate must hold a PhD degree by the date of application (not the date of employment). Position opens on July 01, with possible accommodation for a later start in September or October.

Deadline for application is April 30 or until position filled. Estimated gross salary is around 2500 EUR, depending on experience (years) since PhD. Candidates should contact Christian Robert (gmail address: bayesianstatistics) with a detailed vita (CV) and a motivation letter including a research plan. Letters of recommendation may also be emailed to the same address.

## 50/50 photography competition [another public image]

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , on February 17, 2019 by xi'an

## estimation exam [best of]

Posted in Books, Kids, Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , on January 29, 2019 by xi'an

Yesterday, I received a few copies of our CRC Press Handbook of Mixture Analysis, while grading my mathematical statistics exam 160 copies. Among the few goodies, I noticed the always popular magical equality

E[1/T]=1/E[T]

that must have been used in so many homeworks and exam handouts by now that it should become a folk theorem. More innovative is the argument that E[1/min{X¹,X²,…}] does not exist for iid U(0,θ) because it is the minimum and thus is the only one among the order statistics with the ability to touch zero. Another universal shortcut was the completeness conclusion that when the integral

$\int_0^\theta \varphi(x) x^k \text{d}x$

was zero for all θ’s then φ had to be equal to zero with no further argument (only one student thought to take the derivative). Plus a growing inability in the cohort to differentiate even simple functions… (At least, most students got the bootstrap right, as exemplified by their R code.) And three stars to the student who thought of completely gluing his anonymisation tag, on every one of his five sheets!, making identification indeed impossible, except by elimination of the 159 other names.

## MASH in Le Monde

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , on January 25, 2019 by xi'an

## p-value graffiti in the lift [jatp]

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , on January 3, 2019 by xi'an

## a glaringly long explanation

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , , on December 19, 2018 by xi'an

It is funny that, when I am teaching the rudiments of Bayesian statistics to my undergraduate students in Paris-Dauphine, including ABC via Rasmus’ socks, specific questions about the book (The Bayesian Choice) start popping up on X validated! Last week was about the proof that ABC is exact when the tolerance is zero. And the summary statistic sufficient.

This week is about conjugate distributions for exponential families (not that there are many others!). Which led me to explain both the validation of the conjugacy and the derivation of the posterior expectation of the mean of the natural sufficient statistic in far more details than in the book itself. Hopefully in a profitable way.

## irreversible Markov chains

Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , on November 20, 2018 by xi'an

Werner Krauth (ENS, Paris) was in Dauphine today to present his papers on irreversible Markov chains at the probability seminar. He went back to the 1953 Metropolis et al. paper. And mentioned a 1962 paper I had never heard of by Alder and Wainwright demonstrating phase transition can occur, via simulation. The whole talk was about simulating the stationary distribution of a large number of hard spheres on a one-dimensional ring, which made it hard for me to understand. (Maybe the triathlon before did not help.) And even to realise a part was about PDMPs… His slides included this interesting entry on factorised MCMC which reminded me of delayed acceptance and thinning and prefetching. Plus a notion of lifted Metropolis that could have applications in a general setting, if it differs from delayed rejection.