Publications by xi'an
amazonly associated thanks (& warnin’)
Following a now well-established pattern, let me (re)warn (the few) unwary ‘Og readers that the links to Amazon.com and to Amazon.fr found on this blog are actually susceptible to earn me a monetary gain [from 4% to 8% on the sales] if a purchase is made by the reader in the 24 hours following the entry on Amazon through this link, thanks to th...
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sudoku break
While in Warwick last week, one evening after having exhausted my laptop battery, I tried the following Sudoku (from Libération): > printSudoku(readSudoku("libe.dk")) +-------+-------+-------+ | 4 6 | 2 | 3 9 | | 3 | | 2 | | 7 2 | | 5 6 | +-------+-------+-------+ | | 9 4 5 | | | 5 ...
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Le Monde puzzle [#843]
A straightforward Le Monde mathematical puzzle: Find integers x with 4 to 8 digits which are (a) perfect squares x=y² such that [x/100] is also a perfect square; (b) perfect cubes x=y³ such that [x/1000] is also a perfect cube; (c) perfect cubes x=y³ such that [x/100] is also a perfect cube (where [y] denotes here the integer part). I first ...
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MCMSki IV, Jan. 6-8, 2014, Chamonix (news #14)
The programs of the talks, posters and workshop are now printed and available on Speaker Deck (talks, posters, workshop). Please let me know if you spot anything wrong (even though it will not be reprinted!). This is presumably the last news item till Jan. 5 as I am almost off to Chamonix for a week of hard work preparing the conference skiing wi...
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Le Monde puzzle [#847]
Another X’mas Le Monde mathematical puzzle: A regular dice takes the values 4, 8 and 2 on three adjacent faces. Summit values are defined by the product of the three connected faces, e.g., 64 for the above. What values do the three other faces take if the sum of the eight summit values is 1768? Here is the simple R code I used to find a so...
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MCMSki IV, Jan. 6-8, 2014, Chamonix (news #16)
I am now in Chamonix, a week before MCMSki IV. The town is packed with tourists from all over Europe, English being the dominant language. There is not much snow so far, even though some runs reach town. (I did ski in the nearby Les Houches today and the red runs were either icy or very thin, with stones and grass showing here and there…) Since...
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MCMSki IV, Jan. 6-8, 2014, Chamonix (news #17)
We are a few days from the start, here are the latest items of information for the participants: The shuttle transfer on January 5th, from Geneva Airport to Chamonix lasts 1 hour 30 minutes. At your arrival in the airport , follow the “Swiss Exit”. After the customs, the bus driver (handling a sign “MCMC’Ski Chamonix”) will be waiting f...
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MCMSki IV, Jan. 6-8, 2014, Chamonix (news #18)
MCMSki IV is about to start! While further participants may still register (registration is still open!), we are currently 223 registered participants, without accompanying people. I do hope most of these managed to reach the town of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc despite the foul weather on the East Coast. Unfortunately, three speakers (so far) cannot make...
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MCMSki IV [day 1.5]
The afternoon sessions I attended were “Computational and Methodological Challenges in evidence synthesis and multi-step” organised by Nicky Best and Sylvia Richardson and “Approximate inference” put together by Dan Simpson. Since both Nicky and Sylvia were alas unable to attend MCMSki, I chaired their session, which I found most interest...
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MCMSki IV [day #3]
Already on the final day..! And still this frustration in being unable to attend three sessions at once… Andrew Gelman started the day with a non-computational talk that broached on themes that are familiar to readers of his blog, on the misuse of significance tests and on recommendations for better practice. I then picked the Scaling and optim...
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