Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Omar Rivasplata

Royal Statistical Society @royalstatsoc.bsky.social · 9d

If you haven't already, there's still time for members to vote in our Council elections and have your say in our future! 🗣️

Meet this year's candidates 👉 rss.org.uk/news-publica...

✉️ Check your email for your personalised voting link.

Voting closes midnight on Sunday 12 October.

Meet the candidates for the 2025 RSS Council elections

rss.org.uk

2 7

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · 5d

Mathematics Today dropped through the letterbox this morning. Contains a cute piece on quantum computing illustrated with maths topics taught in A-levels (UK school system). Recommendable for those who teach maths to connect with the trendy topic!
ima.org.uk

IMA

The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications is the UK's chartered professional body for mathematicians and one of the UK's learned societies for mathematics.

ima.org.uk

4

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · 9d

"So, it apparently is not proven in the Donsker—Varadhan paper from 1983, but instead in Lemma 2.1 from their 1975 paper (first in the series, not the fourth)" -- C. Canonne
@ccanonne.github.io
math.stackexchange.com/questions/34...

Reference for the Gibbs variational principle/dual characterization of KL

Let $P,Q$ be two probability distributions. Then, one has the following dual characterization of their Kullback-Leibler divergence (relative entropy): $$ D(P \,\|\,Q) = \sup_f ( \mathbb{E}_P[f(X)]...

math.stackexchange.com

1

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · 11d

TIL The reference for Donsker-Varadhan variational formula is Donsker and Varadhan's "Asymptotic evaluation of certain Markov process expectations for large time-IV" (1983), not the previous parts I, II, III from years 1975 and 1976 that are commonly cited
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Asymptotic evaluation of certain markov process expectations for large time. IV

Click on the article title to read more.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

1 1 4

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · 12d

Good Morning!

"All models are wrong, but some are useful.". --George E. P. Box
x.com/probnstat/st...

x.com

Reposted by Omar Rivasplata

The University of Manchester @manchester.ac.uk · 23d

In 1950, Alan Turing - while at @manchester.ac.uk - proposed a simple but profound experiment: can a machine convincingly imitate human thought?

We now call it the Turing Test. 🧠💻

a man wearing suspenders and a watch looks down in front of a machine

Alt: Alarn Turing looks down in front of a machine

media.tenor.com

1 4 10

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · 18d

Greetings from Stockport

2

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · 19d

I have experience with Entropy MDPI
I'm convinced this is a predatory publisher

1 1 5

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · 24d

In case everybody didn't notice, the Royal Statistical Society's Computational Statistics and Machine Learning (CSML) section now has a bluesky account: @rss-csml.bsky.social

4

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · 28d

Earlier this week attended the Non-Reversible Sampling workshop at Newcastle University. A very nice event!

Thanks to the organisers Sam Power (Bristol), Giorgos Vasdekis (Newcastle) and Andi Wang (Warwick)
sites.google.com/view/probai-...

Newcastle Non-Reversible Sampling Workshop

Topic: This workshop will bring together researchers at the forefront of modern sampling techniques and related disciplines, to discuss recent advances in the field. This event is funded by the ProbA...

sites.google.com

3

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · Sep 4

@aifunmcr.bsky.social

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · Sep 4

We also will continue running our Research Forum which is a very good venue for PhD students, postdocs and others to present in a friendly setting

1

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · Sep 4

A roster of high-profile invited speakers is shaping up, stay tuned and look out for exciting talks coming up on exciting topics, mainly around Fundamentals of Applied AI, from theory and methodology to applications of impact

1

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · Sep 4

✨ We kicked off a new season of talks, the AI FUN with ELLIS Invited Speaker Lecture series, brought to you by the Centre for AI FUNdamentals and the #ELLIS Unit at Manchester 🐝

The 1️⃣st talk was given by our guest speaker Rafael Izbicki (@rafael-izbicki.bsky.social) from UFSCar in Brazil 🇧🇷

1 2 2

Reposted by Omar Rivasplata

Royal Statistical Society @royalstatsoc.bsky.social · Sep 2

Our 2025 Council Elections are now open!

Fellows can vote until 12 Oct to help shape the future of the Society.

🔗 Check your email for your voting link

📄 Meet the candidates: rss.org.uk/news-publica...

2 3

Reposted by Omar Rivasplata

François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · Aug 28

Just finished delivering a course on 'Robust and scalable simulation-based inference (SBI)' at Greek Stochastics. This covered an introduction to SBI, open challenges, and some recent contributions from my own group.

The slides are now available here: fxbriol.github.io/pdfs/slides-....

1 9 34

Reposted by Omar Rivasplata

ELLIS Institute Finland @ellisinstitute.fi · Aug 25

The institute's opening is part of the AI Summit, with distinguished speakers from across European business and government, as well as top researchers and leadership from the @ellis.eu network. An exciting two-day program that marks a milestone for AI & ML research. More info at aisummit.fi

Samuel Kaski @samikaski.bsky.social · Aug 25

Grand opening of @ellisinstitute.fi will be Nov 17-18: The first day will be a broad-audience AI Summit co-organized with AI Finland and Foundation PS in Turku, and the second day will be an @ellis.eu scientific seminar in Espoo for the invited AI and machine learning community. aisummit.fi

3 5

Reposted by Omar Rivasplata

rcraiu.bsky.social @rcraiu.bsky.social · Jul 21

Are you curious about what makes some Markov chain Monte Carlo samplers run fast? Then perhaps you will consider joining us in Toronto, Sept 25-27 for the "Fast and Curious 2: MCMC in action" conference. Registration information is available at:
raducraiu.com/the-fast-and...

The Fast and Curious 2: MCMC in Action

September 25-27, Toronto, Canada Aims: Recent strides in Bayesian inference applied to intricate complex-structured datasets offer a unique opportunity to bring together disparate research communit…

raducraiu.com

2 6

Reposted by Omar Rivasplata

Sam Power @spmontecarlo.bsky.social · Aug 19

I want to advertise some relatively recent work which I really like, and have been fortunate to play a small role in.

The paper is titled "A New Proof of Sub-Gaussian Norm Concentration Inequality" (arxiv.org/abs/2503.14347), led by Zishun Liu and Yongxin Chen at Georgia Tech.

1 9 37

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · Aug 21

ICYMI The University of Manchester's 2025 Magazine is out. There is plenty of interesting content in there. Don't miss taking a look at the opinion piece article on the past, present, and future of computer intelligence

👉 www.manchester.ac.uk/about/magazi...

The past, present, and future of computer intelligence | The University of Manchester

Research. Teaching and learning. Social responsibility. Discover more about The University of Manchester here.

www.manchester.ac.uk

1 2

Reposted by Omar Rivasplata

The University of Manchester @manchester.ac.uk · Aug 20

The 2025 Magazine is out now!

Featuring:
- @duncanivison.bsky.social on Manchester’s bold future
- Simon Johnson on the journey to his Nobel Prize
- Dr Leo Geyer revives music composed more than 80 years ago in Auschwitz

Read it now! 👇
www.manchester.ac.uk/about/magazi...

The image shows an illustrated pair of hands holding open a colorful book filled with abstract, dreamlike visuals such as a moon in space, musical notes with glowing orbs, and the Earth.

3 3

Omar Rivasplata @omarrivasplata.bsky.social · Jul 25

ICYDK what clouds are made of

1 5

Reposted by Omar Rivasplata

Sam Power @spmontecarlo.bsky.social · Jul 24

I am pleased to announce that together with some friends, we are organising a workshop on Non-Reversible MCMC Sampling, taking place at Newcastle University from 8–10 September 2025.

Details on the programme and registration can be found at the workshop website (sites.google.com/view/probai-...).

2 12 31

Reposted by Omar Rivasplata

Adam Johansen @adamjohansen.bsky.social · Jul 23

If anyone is, or knows anyone who is, looking for a postdoc position to work on the foundations of scalable inference and such... applications for a postdoctoral position at Warwick as a part of the OCEAN project (oceanerc.com) are open until 20th August at warwick-careers.tal.net/vx/appcentre....

OCEAN

OCEAN is an ERC Synergy grant gathering researchers to lay the fundations of the next-generation machine learning algorithms, involving decentralized inference and predictive tasks in the presence …

oceanerc.com

5 9

Reposted by Omar Rivasplata

Martin Trapp @trappmartin.bsky.social · Jul 21

Remember that computers use bitstrings to represent numbers? We exploit this in our recent @auai.org paper and introduce #BitVI.

#BitVI directly learns an approximation in the space of bitstring representations, thus, capturing complex distributions under varying numerical precision regimes.

2 3 22