Publications by xi'an

MCMC convergence assessment

27.11.2012

Richard Everitt tweetted yesterday about a recent publication in JCGS by Rajib Paul, Steve MacEachern and Mark Berliner on convergence assessment via stratification. (The paper is free-access.) Since this is another clear interest of mine’s, I had a look at the paper in the train to Besançon. (And wrote this post as a result.) The idea therein...

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Amazon associates links (warnin’)

04.12.2012

As in previous years, let me warn unwary readers that the links to Amazon.com and Amazon.fr found on this blog are actually susceptible to earn me a monetary gain [from 4% to 7%] if a purchase is made in the 24 hours following the entry on Amazon through this link, thanks to the “Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising ...

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Special Issue of ACM TOMACS on Monte Carlo Methods in Statistics

10.12.2012

As posted here a long, long while ago, following a suggestion from the editor (and North America Cycling Champion!) Pierre Lécuyer (Université de Montréal), Arnaud Doucet (University of Oxford) and myself acted as guest editors for a special issue of ACM TOMACS on Monte Carlo Methods in Statistics. (Coincidentally, I am attending a board meeti...

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Le Monde puzzle (#800)

14.12.2012

Here is the mathematical puzzle of the weekend edition of Le Monde: Consider a sequence where the initial number is between 1 and 10³, and each term in the sequence is derived from the previous term as follows: if the last digit of the previous term is between 6 and 9, multiply it by 9; if the last digit of the previous term is between 0 and 5,...

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rencontres R à Lyon, 27-28 juin 2013

19.12.2012

Simon Barthelmé just sent me the announcement that the next French R conference (Rencontres R) will be in Lyon, on June 27-28, 2013, and that the call for propositions is now open. (No possible confusion with MCMSki IV: the later is not in Lyon but Chamonix, not in June but January, and not only about R—even though there will be a session!—b...

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from down-under, Lake Menteith upside-down

22.01.2013

The dataset used in Bayesian Core for the chapter on image processing is a Landsat picture of Lake of Menteith in Scotland (close to Loch Lomond). (Yes, Lake of Menteith, not Loch Menteith!) Here is the image produced in the book. I just got an email from Matt Moores at QUT that the image is both rotated and flipped: The image of Lake Mentieth in...

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local package delays

24.01.2013

When Jean-Michel and I left Berlin, a month ago, I really thought we were that close to sending the new edition of Bayesian Core. Alas, we are not done yet for a series of reasons: leaving for India did not give me enough time to complete the help manual, some codes from the original version did not seem to work any longer, apparently jeopardisin...

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R finals

30.01.2013

On the morning I returned from Varanasi and the ISBA meeting there, I had to give my R final exam (along with three of my colleagues in Paris-Dauphine). This year, the R course was completely in English, exam included, which means I can post it here as it may attract more interest than the French examens of past years… I just completed grading...

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MCMSki IV, Jan. 6-8 (9?), 2014, Chamonix (news #3)

05.02.2013

In case you have not been constantly tracking the changes on the MCMSki IV webpage, here are some news: the number of invited and accepted contributed sessions in the program had considerably increased, to the point of almost filling two parallel sessions for the whole duration of the meeting. This includes an exciting round-table on MCMC softwar...

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packed off!!!

08.02.2013

Deliverance!!! We have at last completed our book! Bayesian Essentials with R is off my desk! In a final nitty-gritty day of compiling and recompiling the R package bayess and the LaTeX file, we have reached versions that were in par with our expectations. The package has been submitted to CRAN (it has gone back and forth a few times, with reques...

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