Canberra-Goulburn

After a short two-day visit to Canberra, I am now heading to Brisbane, last stop of my Australian Tour… I gave my Kyoto talk at ANU, failing to convince my guest Alan Welsh that ABC was a completely justified Bayesian inference method (with the sound argument that it failed the conditionality principle), had a great run in the morning to the top of Black Mountain, witnessing a very nice inversion shown below,

ate a great Indian dinner, and was driven by Alan the next morning to Goulburn for a joint meeting (“Goulburn 19”) between the statisticians of Canberra and of the University of Wollongong. This was a fairly interesting meeting, taking place in a motel conference room. Luxury, luxury!, the room even had a log fire (with the foreseeable consequence of inducing one of my customary and embarrassing dozes!) Actually, this seemed to be a signature of the place as the terrific Trapper’s Bakery across the street also had a fireplace… This meeting was very informal, friendly, and interactive, making me regret I had given there my most technical talk on Rao-Blackwellisation instead of one on ABC model choice.

AMSI Lectures #6 & #7

 

After this fairly long break stretching from southern Australia to northern Queensland, I am back on track for the second half of my AMSI Lectures, giving a seminar in Canberra tomorrow and at the University of Wollongong the day after.

Xi’an Australian Tour 2012

Here is my schedule (so far) for my Australian trip this summer/winter… Looking forward meeting loads of interesting people, problems and places!

Tour Schedule

Date	Host Institution	Venue	Time	Title
12 July	Australian Statistical Conference	Meeting Room 11	9:30 am	Approximate Bayesian Computation for model selection
13 July	University of Adelaide	TBC	TBC	TBC
16 July	University of NSW	Via AGR	2 pm	ABC methods for Bayesian model choice
17 July	University of Western Sydney	TBC	TBC	Rao-Blackwellisation of sampling schemes
26 July	University of Melbourne	Russell Love theatre, Richard Berry (Bldg 160)	2 pm	Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC): advances and limitations
26 July	AMSI Public Lecture	TBC	6 pm	Simulation as a universal tool for statistics
27 July	Monash University, Econometrics and Business Statistics seminar	TBC	2 pm	ABC methods for Bayesian model choice
14 August	Australian National University	Seminar Room G35, John Dedman (Bldg 27)	2 pm	Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC): advances and limitations
15 August	University of Wollongong	CSSM Meeting (Goulburn)		Rao-Blackwellisation of sampling schemes
20 August	University of Queensland	Room N201, Building 50	2 pm	Rao-Blackwellisation of sampling schemes
21 August	Queensland University of Technology	GP-Z1064 Gibson Room	TBC	ABC methods for Bayesian model choice
21 August	Queensland University of Technology	GP-Z1064 Gibson Room	TBC	Simulation as a universal tool for statistics