Publications by xi'an
extinction minus one
The riddle from The Riddler of 19 Feb. is about the Bernoulli Galton-Watson process, where each individual in the population has one or zero descendant with equal probabilities: Starting with a large population os size N, what is the probability that the size of the population on the brink of extinction is equal to one? While it is easy to show t...
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Introduction à Monte Carlo en R
Following a proposal by Springer-Verlag Paris, I have decided to translate Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R with George Casella into French, since a new collection of R books (in French) is planed for the Spring of 2010. The translation will a priori be done by Joachim Robert and Robin Ryder, under my supervision and with the support of Spr...
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“Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R” is out!
That’s it!, “Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R” is out, truly out, I have received a copy from Springer by express mail today! (If you need any further proof, it is also advertised as In stock by Amazon.) Given that the printer exactly reproduces the pdf file sent to Springer, there is no element of surprise as in my earliest book (whe...
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Already a competitor?!
When looking around on Amazon, I found that “Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R” was associated with another very recently published (same day as ours!) book, “Understanding Computational Bayesian Statistics“, by William Bolstad, that seems to mostly cover the same ground as us (with some connections with Bayesian Core for prior model...
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Typos in Chapter 2
When grading homeworks for my Monte Carlo graduate class, I found that my students had pointed out two typos in the exercises of Chapter 2 of “Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R”. – In Exercise 2.17, question d. should be “d. Show that the maximum of is attained at .“ – In Exercise 2.21, in item (ii), should be replaced by and ...
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Typos in Chapter 3
Here are two more typos in the exercises of Chapter 3 of “Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R”. – due to the (later) inclusion of an extra-exercise in the book, the “above exercise” in Exercise 3.5 actually means Exercise 3.3. – in Exercise 3.11, question c, a line got commented by mistake in the LaTeX file and it should read “Ex...
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Typos in Chapter 4
Chapter 4 of “Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R” has four typos (so far) in the exercises: – In Exercise 4.5, the should not be in bold fonts (!) – In Exercise 4.9, I commented too many lines when revising and thus the variance terms vanished. It should read – In Exercise 4.13, following the removal of one exercise, Exercise 4.2 ...
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R exams
As posted yesterday, today was the day of my Exploratory Statistics exam, turned into 3 R exams because of the lack of terminals for the students to work on. (We tried to encourage students to use their own laptop but less than twenty registered…) If you happen to be interested in those exams, they are available here, there, and there. The stud...
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Typos in Chapter 5
After writing the solutions to the odd-numbered exercises in Chapter 5 of “Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R”., I alas found the following typos, two of which are rather major (Exercise 5.3 and Example 5.16). I apologise to the readers these typos may confuse. – Exercise 5.3 has no simple encompassing set and the constraint should be r...
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Typos in Chapters 6-7
Over the weekend and during the R exams, I managed to complete the solution set for Chapters 6 and 7 of “Introducing Monte Carlo Methods with R”. Chapter 6 only exhibited a few typos, despite me covering most exercises in Chapter 6, hence the merging of both chapters. – in Exercise 6.13, both and must use a double exponential proposal in ...
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