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Valencia International Meetings on Bayesian Statistics


Bayesian Statistics, a definition

Statistics is primarily concerned with the analysis of data, either to assist in the appreciation of some underlying mechanism, or to reach effective decisions. In both cases, some uncertainty resides in the situation and the statistician's tasks are both to reduce this uncertainty and to explain it clearly. Problems of this type occur throughout all the physical, social and other sciences. One way of looking at statistics stems from the appreciation that all uncertainty must be described by probability: that probability is the only sensible language for a logic that deals with all degrees of uncertainty, and not just with the extremes of truth and falsity. This is called Bayesian Statistics. Decision-making is embraced by introducing a utility function, itself probability-based, and then maximizing expected utility. Bayesian statistics is designed to handle all situations where uncertainty is found. Since some uncertainty is present in most aspects of life, it is held that Bayesian statistics should be appreciated and used by everyone. It is the logic of contemporary society. It is 'common sense reduced to calculation.'

For an elementary, college level, introduction to Bayesian Statistics, see Bernardo (2003) Bayesian Statistics, an article written for the UNESCO Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS).


The Valencia Meetings

Every four years since 1979, the University of Valencia, Spain, has sponsored meetings devoted to Bayesian Statistics, the Valencia International Meetings on Bayesian Statistics. The published proceedings are listed below. The tremendous number of citations generated by them underscores their scientific relevance. The numbers attending have dramatically increased and include not only specialist statisticians but also others whose work has uncertainty as an important ingredient.

  1. J. M. Bernardo, M. H. DeGroot, D. V. Lindley and A. F. M. Smith (eds). (1980).
    Bayesian Statistics. Valencia: University Press.
  2. J. M. Bernardo, M. H. DeGroot, D. V. Lindley and A. F. M. Smith (eds). (1985).
    Bayesian Statistics 2. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
  3. J. M. Bernardo, M. H. DeGroot, D. V. Lindley and A. F. M. Smith (eds).(1988).
    Bayesian Statistics 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  4. J. M. Bernardo, J. O. Berger, A. P. Dawid and A. F. M. Smith (eds). (1992).
    Bayesian Statistics 4. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  5. J. M. Bernardo, J. O. Berger, A. P. Dawid and A. F. M. Smith (eds). (1996).
    Bayesian Statistics 5. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  6. J. M. Bernardo, J. O. Berger, A. P. Dawid and A. F. M. Smith (eds). (1999).
    Bayesian Statistics 6. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Contents available at Valencia 6
  7. J. M. Bernardo, M. J. Bayarri, J. O. Berger, A. P. Dawid, D. Heckerman, A. F. M. Smith and M. West (eds). (2003).
    Bayesian Statistics 7. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Preface and contents available at Valencia 7.pdf

For details on the origin and development of the Valencia International Meetings on Bayesian Statistics, click The Valencia Meetings.pdf
The Valencia Meetings are Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Conferences.


Valencia / ISBA Eighth World Meeting on Bayesian Statistics

Benidorm (Alicante, Spain), June 1st to June 6th, 2006
Universitat de València, Spain
International Society for Bayesian Analysis

www.uv.es/valenciameeting

Co-sponsored by the Universitat de València (UV) and by the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA), the 8th Valencia International Meeting on Bayesian Statistics and the 2006 World Meeting of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis will be jointly held in Benidorm (Alicante, Spain) from Friday June 2nd to Tuesday June 6th, both inclusive. The language of the conference will be English

Local Organizer
José M. Bernardo (Universitat de València, Spain) jose.m.bernardo@uv.es


Programme Committee


Venue

Delegates are expected to arrive on the evening of Thursday June 1st (the opening lecture will be early in the morning of June 2nd) and depart on the morning of Wednesday, June 7th (the gala dinner will be on the evening of June 6th). As in previous occasions, this will be a residential conference in a coastal resort. On this occasion the venue is Gran Hotel Bali (see picture below), a four star hotel with an appropriate purpose built large auditorium, built in the south end of Benidorm (50 km north from Alicante and 140 km south from Valencia). For precise details on the Hotel location, telephone and fax numbers, see HotelLocation.pdf.

The closest airport is Alicante (ALC), well connected to Madrid, Barcelona and many European cities, by both conventional and low-cost airlines. Possible alternatives include flying to either Valencia (VLC) or Madrid (MAD). Fast trains connect Valencia and Alicante (two hours) and Madrid and Alicante (four hours) several times a day (details at Renfe). Given the timing of the conference early flight bookings are strongly recommended.

Local transportation to Benidorm

A free shuttle bus service organized by the conference will be operating between Alicante airport and Hotel Bali Benidorm on both May 31st and June 1st, running every two hours. The specific departure times on both days will be:

11h00, 13h00, 15h00, 17h00, 19h00, 21h00, 23h00 and 01h00 am

Conference staff (showing a conference poster) will be on the arrivals hall to help. Similarly, buses will be provided from Hotel Bali Benidorm to Alicante airport on June 7th. The ride is about 50 minutes long. The departure times from the hotel will be:

04h00, 06h00, 08h00, 10h00, 12h00, 14h00, 16h00, 18h00 and 20h00.

Benidorm may be reached from either Alicante airport, Alicante town, or Valencia town by public bus www.alsa.es. Notice that there are two bus stops in Benidorm; that in Av. Jaume I (in Playa de Poniente) is closer to Gran Hotel Bali. Besides, there is a narrow gauge train (a tram), from Alicante harbour (Marina) to Benidorm www.fgv.es. A taxi between Alicante airport and Benidorm should cost about 65 euros.

For additional local information see
www.comunitatvalenciana.com,
www.alicanteturismo.com,
www.benidorm.org,
www.alicante-spain.com.


Contents


Scientific Programme

1. Postgraduate Tutorial Seminar

The Conference will be preceded by three 2h30m long tutorials, intended to provide a short review of the main ideas in Bayesian Statistics. The tutorials will be delivered by members of the programme committee.

Thursday, June 1st

10h00-12h30: Tutorial 1 14h30-17h00: Tutorial 2 17h30-20h00: Tutorial 3

2.Valencia 8 Invited Programme

Friday, June 2nd

09h00-09h25: Opening ceremony

09h30-11h00: Session 1. Bayes factors

Chair: Geweke, John (University of Iowa, USA)

11h30-13h00: Session 2. Foundations

Chair: George, Edward (University of Pennsylvania, USA)

Saturday, June 3rd

09h30-11h00: Session 3. Priors on function spaces

Chair: Schmidt, Alexandra (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

11h30-13h00: Session 4. Robust and objective Bayesian inference

Chair: Fienberg, Stephen (Carnegie-Mellon University, USA)

Sunday, June 4th

09h30-11h00: Session 5. Genomics and proteomic

Chair: Richardson, Sylvia (Imperial College School of Medicine, UK)

11h30-13h00: Session 6. Model selection

Chair: Hans, Chris (The Ohio State University, USA)

Monday, June 5th

09h30-11h00: Session 7. Bayesian computation

Chair: Roberts, Gareth (Lancaster University, UK)

11h30-13h00: Session 8. Latent feature models and multiple testing

Chair: MacEachern, Steven (Ohio State University, USA)

Tuesday, June 6th

09h30-11h00: Session 9. Computer vision and function representation

Chair: van der Linde, Angelika (University of Bremen, Germany)

11h30-13h00: Session 10. Genetics

Chair: Mortera, Julia (Università di Roma 3, Italy)


3. ISBA selected plenary talks

A set of 32 twenty-five minute plenary contributed oral presentations have been selected by the ISBA Conference Programme Committee, which will take place in the afternoons.

The ISBA Conference Programme Committee comprises the following: Kerrie Mengersen (Australia, co-chair), Peter Müller (USA, co-chair), Herbie Lee (USA, co-chair Finance), Jose M. Bernardo (Spain, past Chair; Valencia Programme Committee), Richard Arnold (New Zealand), Cathy Chen (Taiwan), Merlise Clyde (USA), Yanan Fan (Australia), Subashis Ghosal (USA), Paolo Giudici (Italy), Antonietta Mira (Italy), Paul Mostert (South Africa), Josemar Rodrigues (Brazil), Judith Rousseau (France), Fabrizio Ruggeri (Italy), Mark Steel (UK), Robert Wolpert (USA) and Jiangsheng Yu (China).

Friday, June 2nd

17h00-18h40: Session 1. Bioinformatics and biostatistics

Chair: Mira, Antonietta (Università dell'Insubria, Italy)

19h10-20h50: Session 2. Savage Prize Finalists

Chair: Clyde, Merlise (Duke University, USA)

Saturday, June 3rd

17h00-18h40: Session 3. Spatial and temporal inference

Chair: Mengersen, Kerrie (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)

19h10-20h50: Session 4. Non-parametric and flexible inference

Chair: Ruggeri, Fabrizio (CNR-IMATI Milano, Italy)

Monday, June 5th

17h00-18h40: Session 5. Applications

Chair: Mostert, Paul (Universiteit Stellenbosch, South Africa)

19h10-20h50: Session 6. Modelling

Chair: Steel, Mark (University of Warwick, UK)

Tuesday, June 6th

14h30-16h10: Session 7. Model selection and comparison

Chair: Lee, Herbert (University of California at Santa Cruz, USA)

16h40-18h20: Session 8. Theory

Chair: Rousseau, Judith (Université de Paris Dauphine and CREST, France)


4. Plenary poster sessions

A set of three plenary poster sessions, the seminal means of communication of research by conference participants. These will take place in the evenings.

The space for posters will be portrait format: 100 cm wide and 200 cm height. No specific style required, just use your imagination to maximize visual impact. Authors are encouraged to bring to the poster session some hard copies of the relevant technical report(s), so that these may be handed over to interested people.

For optional submission to the published conference proceedings see below.

The order in which posters appear listed below is mainly alphabetical on the first-named author. However, efforts have been made to avoid authors of more than one poster have two posters the same evening and to accommodate some travel requirements, resulting in exceptions to that general rule.


Friday, June 2nd

22h00-01h00: Poster Session 1.

Saturday, June 3rd

22h00-01h00: Poster Session 2.

Monday, June 5th

22h00-01h00: Poster Session 3.


Conference CD-ROM

A CD-ROM will be distributed at the conference. The final pdf version of all invited papers must be submitted by May 1st 2006, and will be included on the CD.

All abstracts of contributed papers presented at the meeting (in either oral or poster form) will also be included in the this CD. Please make sure to e-mail your abstract by March 31st, using the appropriate LaTeX format.


Proceedings

Edited by the Conference Programme Committee, Bayesian Statistics 8, the Valencia 8 conference proceedings, will be published after the meeting by Oxford University Press. The title page, the preface and the contents of Bayesian Statistics 7, the Proceedings of the previous meeting, may be downloaded from Valencia7.

Bayesian Statistics 8 will include refereed versions of the invited papers, and their discussion. Authors of invited papers are asked to submit their final versions as soon as available, but before May 1st 2006, in the specific LaTeX style described in the files contained in the zipped folder V8Macros.zip.

For contributed papers at the meeting, the following two-step publication process is encouraged:

  1. Submit the paper to Bayesian Analysis. Submission can, of course, be done at any time; indeed, submission well before the conference is encouraged. The paper will then undergo the usual refereeing process of the journal.
  2. Authors of those papers that are accepted by Bayesian Analysis (and presented as either an oral contributed paper or as a poster at the Valencia meeting) are encouraged to prepare a synopsis of the paper---of at most six pages---to be submitted for publication in the Valencia volume, Bayesian Statistics 8.
  3. A synopsis must clearly be so labelled, and should provide an overview of the primary Bayesian Analysis article.
  4. The deadline for submission of these six page synopsis (of papers already accepted by Bayesian Analysis) is September 25th, 2006, three months after the meeting. Early submission to Bayesian Analysis is strongly encouraged.
  5. The six page synopsis should be prepared in the specific LaTeX style described in the files contained in the zipped folder V8Macros.zip.

Those contributed papers accepted by Bayesian Analysis, presented at the Valencia meeting, and for which a synopsis is submitted to the Valencia Proceedings will be considered for the Lindley Prize Lindley Prize. Note that it will be the original paper, not the synopsis, that will be considered for the Lindley Prize.


Registration

The registration fee (which includes the farewell dinner) is 225/250 Eur for ISBA/Non-ISBA members. Non-ISBA members may use the conference registration form to join ISBA at a reduced 25 Eur fee and qualify for the ISBA registration fee. The registration fee for accompanying persons (which also includes the farewell dinner) is 100 Eur.

The accommodation fee at Gran Hotel Bali for the full period, (6 nights) with breakfast and dinner (including beer or wine), but not lunch, is 650/450 Eur on single/double occupancy basis. The hotel has 52 floors and delegates are encouraged to express their floor preference at registration; the 400 pre-reserved rooms will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. The cost of the use of the auditorium, and that of renting the required equipment has been distributed in the fees quoted above.

To register, please download the relevant form as a pdf file V8Registration.pdf, and mail, e-mail or fax the completed form, including the appropriate payment details, to the address provided at the form heading.

Cancellation policy: Full refund (minus 4% bank costs) on both registration and accommodation if cancelled before May 12th. Only the registration fee will be refunded if cancelled after that date.


Valencia Mailing List

If you may be interested in attending Valencia 8, or if you just want to be included in the conference mailing list, please click the button below:
[Valencia Mailing List]


This web page, http://www.uv.es/valenciameeting
and its US mirror, http://www.isds.duke.edu/research/conferences/valencia/
will be periodically updated as the organization of the Meeting progresses.


José M. Bernardo Home page Bayesian Mailing List

Valencia International Meetings on Bayesian Statistics.
Departamento de Estadística e I.O., Facultad de Matemáticas,
Universitat de València, 46100-Burjassot, Valencia, Spain.