Publications by xi'an
Le Monde puzzle [#824]
A rather dull puzzle this week: Show that, for any integer y, (√3-1)2y+(√3+1)2y is an integer multiple of a power of two. I just have to apply Newton’s binomial theorem to obtain the result. What’s the point?! Filed under: Books, Kids, R Tagged: Binomial theorem, Isaac Newton, Le Monde, mathematical puzzle Related To leave a comment...
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Bayesian computational tools
I just updated my short review on Bayesian computational tools I first wrote in April for the Annual Review of Statistics and Its Applications. The coverage is quite restricted, as I took advantage of two phantom papers I had started a while ago, one with Jean-Michel Marin, on hierarchical Bayes methods and on ABC. (As stressed in the first versi...
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integral priors for binomial regression
Diego Salmerón and Juan Antonio Cano from Murcia, Spain (check the movie linked to the above photograph!), kindly included me in their recent integral prior paper, even though I mainly provided (constructive) criticism. The paper has just been arXived. A few years ago (2008 to be precise), we wrote together an integral prior paper, published in ...
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Le Monde puzzle [#827]
Back to R (!) for the current Le Monde puzzle: Given an unknown permutation of the set {1,…,6}, written on the faces of a cube, there exist a sequence of summits such that increasing by one unit the three numbers of the faces sharing the successive summits in the sequence leads to identical values over all faces. What was the initial permutati...
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9th IMACS seminar on Monte Carlo Methods, Annecy
As astute ‘Og’s readers may have gathered (!), I am now in Annecy, Savoie, for the 9th IMACS seminar on Monte Carlo Methods. Where I was kindly invited to give a talk on ABC. IMACS stands for “International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation” and the conference gathers themes and sensibilities I am not familiar with. ...
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Le Monde puzzle [#825]
The current puzzle is the last one before the summer break and not exciting enough to take along: Take the first ten digits, create five pairs out of those, and for each pair (x,y) derive the quantity (min(x,y)+1.5max(x,y)). What is the collection of pairs that maximises the product of those quantities? I wrote the following R code in the train...
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MCMSki IV, Jan. 6-8, 2014, Chamonix (news #7)
More exciting (and important!) news about MCMSki IV: First, some if not all of the 9 invited and the 16 contributed sessions are about now documented by abstracts. The program is completely set! If you plan to present a poster, remember to send me by email (a) surname, name (institution): title as the subject, (b) abstract and keywords (and possi...
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MCMSki IV, Jan. 6-8, 2014, Chamonix (news #6)
A reposted item of news about MCMSki IV: as posted by Brad Carlin this afternoon to the Biometrics Section and Bayesian Statistical Science Section of the ASA, The fifth joint international meeting of the IMS (Institute of Mathematical Statistics) and ISBA (International Society for Bayesian Analysis), nicknamed “MCMSki IV”, will be held in ...
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informative hypotheses (book review)
The title of this book Informative Hypotheses somehow put me off from the start: the author, Hebert Hoijtink, seems to distinguish between informative and uninformative (deformative? disinformative?) hypotheses. Namely, something like H0: μ1=μ2=μ3=μ4 is “very informative” and the alternative Ha is completely uninformative, while the “al...
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MCMSki IV, Jan. 6-8, 2014, Chamonix (news #9)
This a reminder about the October 15 deadlines for MCMSki IV: First, the early bird rate for the registration ends up on October 15. Second, the young investigator travel support can only be requested up to October 15 as well. Be sure to book your hotel or rental place early too as Chamonix is quite popular in January. (I had few choices left f...
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