Snow?

Ok, checca will say that I'm a lazy asshole that waste his time all the day. Well, when you run simulations it's part of the game!

Riccardo! We want to see some picture of the windy city with the snow! I have been told that it's amazing (and freezing!).

For all the others, I'll see you guys next Wed...

Cheers from Duke...

This blog is dying...

Come on guys! Let this blog to come back to life!

Bustra why aren't yuo writing something 'bout snow!?

BTW 18 days and I'm back! See y'all soon!

Omegahat

I know I'm the only one writing on this blog, but this time I think I've an interesting topic to share with you guys.
Yesterday I attended a lecture by John M. Chambers, one of the guys who invented S.

He talked about the interface between R and object-oriented programming languages, such as C++, python, java, ..., in a much easier way than using .C or .Call functions.
Also, he talked about object-oriented programming in R.
If you're interested in these topic I can share some links:
http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/Rcpp/index.html (package to interface R with C++)
http://www.omegahat.org/OOP/ (package for object-oriented programming in R)

Bustra, give it a try! :)

cheers!

The Big game is coming...

The big game (Cal vs. Stanford) is coming and the campus is setting up the right atmosphere...
(maybe a little trashy...)

Unmasking a Psychologyst

Hey guys!
This morning I was reading la Repubblica and I found this:
http://www.repubblica.it/scienze/2010/11/12/news/veggenti-9050929/?ref=HRERO-2
and, eventually, this:
http://dbem.ws/FeelingFuture.pdf

Now, I started reading and immediately I had the feeling that there is something wrong with the statistics there... (I didn't read the whole paper, though)
Since the journal has a high impact factor (number 3 within psychology journals), it would be nice to unravel the mystery showing (if it's the case) that it's all about bad use of statistics...
I know... I have a lot of time to waste...
but if someone is interested, let me know!

Checca che fine hai fatto?

Perfect world of research

Hi guys, this is really funny.

Living in the US in an international and scientific environment is a wonderful experience that is teaching me a lot of things about science and life as well. More and more the "perfect world of Research" is becoming just a work, made of compromises and things not totally fair. Like the one I'm gonna tell you...

I was at lunch with one of my friend, that as almost all my network here is a young and smart scientist. Zrinka is a postdoc at the Department of Radiation Oncology here at Duke. She published a paper last year: "The novel amidocarbamate derivatives of ketoprofen: synthesis and biological activity" on Medicinal and Chemistry Research available here. Notice the received date of the paper: 16 July 2009.

What happened few months later is amazing. Two indian guys Prasanta Kumar Sahoo and Pritishova Behera saw her paper while it wasn't still accepted for publication. What they did? They cut&paste the whole paper, changed the author's names (clearly!) and slightly changed the title. They submitted to the European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry the copied paper with title "Synthesis and biological screening of some novel amidocarbamate derivatives of ketoprofen"! The paper, received the 15th of September was eventually accepted and published! And it is still available here!Amazing, but it is not the end of this story.

Maybe Prasanta Kumar Sahoo and Pritishova Behera were not totally happy about "their" pubblication result. Hence they decided to submit the same paper, again changing sligthly the title in "Cytostatic Activity of Some Novel Amidocarbamate Derivatives of Ketoprofen" to the Journal of Cancer Therapy, which again accepted their paper. Received date April, 19, 2010. Note that "their" first copied paper was already published when they submitted for the second time.

The last paper is no more available online, since Zrinka realized what was happening after a google search. She and her coauthors wrote to all the journals involved and one replyed dropping the fake pubblication, while the other still did nothing (sad, isn't it?). After few days she also received an email from Dr. (maybe just Mr.) Sahoo that's hilarious!

(somebody suggest me to drop this part...)

Riccardo & Maestro, could you please send me your working paper about clustering via nonparametric density estimation? ;)

Pictures

I have not posted any photo of my new workspace yet... here you are:

my desk:


and "You knooow?", always with me... :-)

Vital Statistics

Interesting comment appeared in Nature about the role of the statistician in science:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7318/full/467914a.html

cheers!
davi.

This is nice...

News from Evanston

Hi guys,

is it all OK, wherever you are?

I would like to give you some updates from Evanston, since I've some time. But, to tell the truth, I'm quite tired, perhaps due to the jet-lag, but more probably because I've spent all day walking into the Campus among several offices, in order to have an account, an ID... but it is just like in Italy, everyone says to go to the next office, and no-one solves anything... At the end, they told me to wait until Monday... I'll see...

Moreover, I see two apartments, and I just choose to join into the second one, with a young guy who study biology... at the end, also in US I'll be in the same room with another person... but I'm sure I'll be all OK.

I will give you more precise information about Evanston and Northwestern University as soon as I discover, until now I know NU is really big (obviously the offices where they send me time by time were on opposite side of the campus...), while its Statistics' Department is very small, nothing compared with our...

Take care!

More XXIV cycle in USA than Italy

...from today!

Welcome to Riccardo!

I miss you...

I miss you so much

Dear all,
I miss you so much. I think I start working on December-January, for one year. They will give me some datasets to analyse about the tourists appreciation of Venice-museums (Osservatorio civico dei musei). Meaby we get also a variable which is the mean-time in which the tourists look for a given picture, it's amazing. I'm in love with Menardo il Rosso.

In the meanwhile (waiting for December to start my job), I go to all the public conferences. Yesterday evening "Psycoanalysis conference" in the public library. I learn a lot of things, for instance, the greek term "Entelechia" it is a very marvellous word, foud out by Aristotele. In psycoanalysis it means that the person follows his own interior rules to develop himself without looking at others. Since I am in love with my city, tomorrow I will go to partecipate to some courses at the University (we have our own university in Mestre!!), one about Art History, and the other about Psycoanalysis.
So, that is my program.
I really hope all of you are fine, I really appreciated the last two years with all of you and I have to thank Monjed to all the things he teaches me about his beautiful culture.
I wish you all the best,

Marlies

ALMOST BACK TO ITALY!!!

Hey ragazzi,
is everything fine? I hope so for Monjed, who's the only one I don't really talk with if not through this blog (Monjed, skype!!!!), for the others I know it already, you're all fine (bloody Tony, he never dies!!!).

I'm also fine, and preparing myself to come back to Italy. I still have two weeks here; next friday there's going to be my goodbye party, then I'll spend the last weekend (23rd-24th) in Germany with my friends and on the monday morning (25th) I'll take my super Focus and drive back to Padova.

This was just for you to know my plans; I know I'll find only Bustra and Monjed in the office, Riccardo is leaving the week before (maledetto, you could have waited for the last spritz together!), luckily Tony is still in the middle of nowhere, Maestro I'm looking forward to see you (December, right?), and Marlies we see each other very soon!

Ah, yesterday I bought the helmet and the jacket for the motorbike, now I only need to buy the motorbike itself... and then all the parking spots at the depatment will be Bustra's and mine!!!!


Ciao semi (tranne la Marlies)!!!



Checca

Imagine Venezia with a 5 lanes highway...

Here it is! :)

If you want to waste 5 min of your time...

...try this!

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

And go further on the web page to see what happens somethimes in this fake world of research! Now I know how Bustra(TM), Cane and other strange fools were able to get a job!

Marlies ????????????

Dear Friends !!!
we should not agree about what Marlies is just decided !!!!
Please I ask everyone of you to speak with her.
Ph.D is very important, one year and she will finish.
We all succeed the first year which was very difficult.
Please tell her to be more patient.
Please !!!!!!!!!!!!!

After all this pessimism and sadness...

...something nice: United States of America National Parks!

Last week I finished the first part of the thesis and written in a paper form I've submitted it to JASA T&M. Right moment to take a short break!

Taking a camping tent, two sleepingbags and one cheap flight to Las Vegas and renting a small car there can bring you to some of the most wonderful landscape in the world! We all know that Europe is better that USA for almost everything: art, culture, history, people, food, wine, way of living the city... but we don't have something so spectacular as Bryce Canyon, Arches park or the famous Grand Canyon!

It's wonderful to imagine that millenia of geology, plate tectonic and erosion, everything moved by natural mechanisms and a big amount of randomness, can lead to spectacular landscape like those!

Really recommended to Maestro (you are so close to Utah and Arizona!) and Riccardo but actually to everyone!

And also this is Don Milani

this is what i call a Professor, a man who join and cares about his students, their lives their sorrows. You are my friends, please if a day you will have the opportunity to become a teacher, remember that the teacher has most of all an ethical responsability, s/he has to believe in the capacity of the students and MUST not lye to them.

One day I will make explicit all this stuff

ooooooooohh: some phd students

Lucièn Le Cam: an honest man

He spent his life studying likelihood asymptotics, but read what he wrote in the first pages of his book:


Of course nobody has been able to prove that maximum likelihood estimates are
‘‘best’’ under all circumstances. The lack of any such proof is not sufficient by itself
to invalidate Fisher’s claims.


This is a man to respect because his view is not biased.

And I come to this point..

In which I recognize that Hardy (the Hardy Weinberg model, teacher of mathematics at Cambridge) inspired all my Phd thesis, because he was used to say to his students that
"mathematics is beautiful precisely because it is useless"
so, my Phd thesis is the most beautiful work I ever see.

Baggage

Today morning I have bought my huge beggage: it is the colour of this cow:)

Wine and cheese...

...are wonderful expecially if they are for free!

North Face

I don't know if Riccardo knows it, but North Face is from Berkeley, and here it much cheaper than in Italy... So I will come back dressed like Riccardo... :)

"The North Face legend begins, ironically, on a beach. More precisely, San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, at an altitude of only 150 feet above sea level. It was here in 1966 that two hiking enthusiasts resolved to follow their passions and founded a small mountaineering retail store.

In 1968, The North Face moved to the other side of San Francisco Bay, to the unbridled possibilities of the Berkeley area, and began designing and manufacturing its own brand of technical mountaineering apparel and equipment."

to become rich

you can win a nobel prize if you are able to prove that there are usually two numbers between two prime numbers...

cioè due numeri in mezzo a due numeri primi: Ex: 17 () () 19 () () 21 () () 23

this problem devasteted the life of a lot of mathematicians..so wonderful!!

Negativity

In my opinion there is too much pessimism all-around: in this week, when you leave me alone, I've been adopted by post-doc, who describe a gloomy future; Marlies came one times, saying that we both will feel bad in our visiting period; I spoke with a third year PhD student and he said he is in a bad situation... is there any favourable person in this f***ing Department?

If you really don't want to follow the optimism of your Presidente del Consiglio, at least think to Coles' words: "statistics is beautiful => life is beautiful!!!"

HELP!!!

Guys,
when I need you on skype or gmail for serious reasons (and not to talk about bullshit) you're never there...

Anyway... the question is the following: do you know how to compute the smoothness of a curve in R (and if this is possible)? I want to smooth a time series (I'm going to use loess) and then compute how much smooth is the curve that I ended up with; the idea is to compute some smoothness indicator, like, as an example, the penalty term that you consider while fitting a spline (\int |f^{''}(t)|^2 dt )... Any suggestion (I can't understand if the R loess function gives as output some usefull quantities or not...), have you ever dealt with this?


Thank you!!!


Ciao bei e bea


Checca


P.S.: please (toni) no comments about that fact that I permute, or at least find some new funny sentences, lately you were using always the same boring ones...

Dear all,
I really miss you !!
I just arrived from Saudi Arabia (Mecca and Medina) for doing what is called in my religion by Umrah. Here I show you some pictures.
Best Regards

This cat from there, this is a gift for Marlies, Enjoy !!!!
This is Prophet Mohammad Mosque in Medina. ...
this is too. ...
This is too ... with my family ...

First step for doing Umrah before moving to Mecca ...

The following photos from Mecca.
Many people there, you can not walk easily.
This is called Kaaba, the place where we pray ...


This is from outside ... Last step for doing Umrah is to cut our hair ..

From Berkeley

Ciao Ragazzi!
After my first week in Berkeley, I finally can write something on the blog!

Everithing is fine, I had a little trip in California with my girlfriend, and now I'm ready to start my project here!

My advisor here (Sandrine) already gave me a project to work on, even if I don't have access to the data for now... Here everything is pretty organized, I think I will have most of the day busy with classes, seminars and group meetings, so I'll have to work late I guess...

You cannot imagine how big is the University here, the campus is huge (with wifi connection everywhere!) and the Department of Statistics is a 10 floors building... I think there are something like 2,000 visiting phd students/postdoc for this semester... (not all in statistics... :) )

So it seems like a very exciting place to do research...
Ah! My project will be in collaboration with Stanford, so I guess I cannot complain... I hope to make some good contact too!

I don't know if you know it (i didn't) but the most important "monument" of the campus is The Campanile which is a (bad) copy of the Campanile di San Marco in Venice... but not all of the people know that... anyway, this is the comparison.. (and that awful building behind is the dept of stat!)

Hope to hear from you soon!
davide

I'M BACK IN BELGIUM

Ciao guys!

How're you? I'm back in belgium since monday, deep sadness, holydays are finished... I relaxed a lot during these 10 days, drove a lot as well (5 countries and almost 5000 Km in 10 days, poor ford focus...). I'm already back to work, trying to use in the best way my last 2 months here.

I have to admit, anyway, that I don't want to go back to Italy. Don't want to leave this place for many reasons, related both to work and social life... Tony is it the same for you too? I don't know... I'm seriously thinking about trying to find a postdoc position abroad after the phd, you Tony? Sorry guys, I ask tony because he's the only one among you who is living this experience abroad right now...

Ciao, I miss you all


Checca


P.S.: I confirm, kg gained since I'm in Belgium... 10... ups...

Ciao John

Last week died one of the greatest statistician, John Ashworth Nelder father (with the already gone, Wedderburn) of the GLM.

http://www.vsni.co.uk/featured/john-nelder/

Palestinian Conference on Modern Trends in Mathematics and Physics II

This is from Nablus, An-Najah National University, Palestinian Conference on Modern Trends in Mathematics and Physics II

"Basta Marlies"

Marlies, please, I remember you the title and the aim of this blog: "XXIV cycle in Statistics - To keep in touch about academic and personal life of the XXIV cycle PhD students".
Your last posts are totally useless and upsetting (that's why I used that bad language!). Image of "sweety-heart-on-sunset", of the Piave river, of trainers with stupid words, cats, Erman Hesse and 1957 Sanremo's hits are absolutely not allowed any more!

Please write about you, about your research, seminars and so on. Not about stupid stuff!

Te vojo ben, tranquia, ma moeghea!

Frase illuminante

L'uomo non è un animale razionale ma un animale che razionalizza.

Robert A.Heinlein


Non è una frase sconvolgente e illuminante?

Sorry monjed,

Man is not a rational animal, but an animal which rationalizes (I do not know if it is the right translation...)

Buone vacanze a tutti, vi voglio bene

Bayesian girls

La cosa interessante e` che il tizio che canta e` David Banks... un personaggio anche solo quando passa per i corridoi!

Parole sante: Positive regard

Just to recall 6 even greater statisticians

From left to right Riccardo de Bin (before Bayesian conversion), Antonio Canale (some hairs before), Nicola Lunardon (before absuming hormones and anabolic), Francesca Solmi (several Kilos ago!), Davide Risso (before Mac era) and Monjed H. Samuh (before becoming a Pesarin man).

Just to recall you an old post

Now, look: Cox, Reid, Fraser and Mc Cullagh.

the main statistician of the world (missed only Ole and that dishonest, immoral man of Severini, which I surely want to see with my eyes to tell him he discovered an unpracticable likelihood modification). Now, the two persons in the middle (Nancy and Don) are just waiting for me up to 50 years in this photo. So, now the time is coming...Urrà!

Ragazziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo, voi non sapete neanche, non immaginate neanche, non avete ideaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Assieme a Nancy Reid, il mio co-supervisore èèèèèèèèèè
Dooooon Fraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer
Non ci posso credere! Mi seguono in 2, non è fantastico?

Che persone meravigliose, come i veneti:)

Bustra's nightmare: Bernardo's simulations

There are Bernardo's simulations running on my pc from last week! Dchure sucks...
:-)

Holy Land: Sacra Patria Veneta

Now I am returning. I am so sorry I did not bring my camera, but the other collegues will send me the photos they said. Oh, Checca you do not imagine I have been so lucky because I met a young professor in Economics which teaches in Montreal and he has a lot of Italian friends in Toronto, so now I can just have some contacts. He said that Canada is much more similar to Veneto than to Rome, but this is true generally for the freanch part, not for mine.

Anyhow, I want to say to all of you that there exiusts the Paradise here on Earth: his name is Veneto.

Rome

Ciao! Rome is wonderful, and also researcher for all part of the world are, I am spanding a great time here...most of all I like the piece of garden outside the colosseo, it is so quite and peaceful. Today I go to Flaminia's home in periferia...the only problem of Rome are Romans! I never seen such unpoliteness!! It is totally unaceptable, I was hitting a man yesterday with my sun umbrella, because he was really unpolite. Roman people totally lack of "senso civico". Our Veneto is a great place to live, I will never complain anymore about Mestre...
See you soon, hope all are well.
Marlies

Slovenia Conference

Hi Friends,
I just arrived from Slovenia.
The conference was very good, Portoroz very beautiful city.
My presentation was more than wonderful, some of the audience were interested in my topic and they asked me some questions.
I did some photos, I show you here some of them.

This is in front of Grand Hotel Bernardin )Conference venue(, those on right hand two Indian Professors, and on my left hand from Iran.


From the right: Me, I do not know, Iran, Austria, India, I do not know, My Prof., and Indunesia.



Myself




This photo I was in used to see it as a background with windows. But this is really natural and it is taken by Monjed's Camera. It could be incredible.



But Now I show you a photo that is really incredible,..............
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still 2 minutes
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NO MARLIES!!!

Ciao guys,
how are you? Marlies you're right, I'm sorry, it has been a while since I posted something the last time!

I've been so busy in the last period (hihihi)... but the first part of my work here is almost finished: I'm waiting for the results of the last simulations, the pdf is aready there, with the last two tables still empty, and the conclusions to be ended after the last results will arrive.

So next week (hopefully) I'll start something else.

About real life (work work work, too boring), I'm having a lot of fun, now it's festival season here, which means party party all the weekends. I've been to a huge festival in Germany 2 weeks ago, met a lot of nice people, enjoyed very much!!!

Poldino is fine, he's enjoying too the good weather of these days, and the nice atmosphere that the football word cup brings with it. He likes to watch the matches in the Oude Markt (the square with all the bars), drinking fresh water and cheering each time for the team with the cutest player (you know, I train dogs, I taught him so well!!!!)

Monjed, skype? add my contact (checca_poldo): I often hear news (together with, sometimes, stupid things) from the others through skype, it's a good way to keep in touch.


Ciao ciao

We miss you all!


Checca e Poldo

Che belli i giochi di parole

Sorry Monjed, I do not translate

non centra niente ma è bellissima:

"Chi è il ministro dei trasporti cinese?" Furgon Cin
"Chi è la ballerina slovacca?" "Holanca Sbilenca"

Questo gioco c'è anche in Germania: mio zio Franz mi ha detto che il ministro dei trasporti cinese è "Umlei-tung", e in tedesco Umleitung significa deviazione stradale:)

Cantata da Gino Latilla e Carla Boni nel 1957...

I feel like...Thomas Edison

Sono proprio soddisfatto di questo traguardo: ho appena scoperto il millesimo modo per non inventare una lampadina ! Thomas Edison

Sono proprio soddisfatta di questo traguardo: ho appena scoperto il millesimo modo per non inventare una versosimiglianza profilo modificata di Severini! anonymous Phd student

Toronto Marlies va a Toronto

What did you do, Tony ?????

Oro benon!

Puntata di Fuoriclasse dedicata alla Facoltà di Scienze Statistiche di Padova

Dear Friends,
You are invited to see my poster at my Professor's conference on Tuesday 15 June from 18:00–19:00 .
Thank you in advance for the ones who are coming and also thanks for the others who will not be able to be there at that time.
Best Wishes
Your Friend MoNjEd

Dear Friends,
Since nobody post something for a long time ago, I will start to refresh our blog.
Enjoy with some new photos:
Here is Meastro waiting his coffee.

Here is Riccardo eating his apple.



Here are some girls in our Department.


And I am here enjoying under the shadow.


And this is my dream bed in our office (I would this bed to be in our office).