I just learned that Paul Deheuvels died last week. He was head of the statistics department at Université Pierre & Marie Curie when I was a lecturer there (1987-1992). And a professor of statistics and probability there for his entire career, from 1974 to 2013. While we were working on completely different topics, and had divergent political views, we kept an amicable connection throughout the years, as we were living close enough to meet once in a while at the local farmers’ market and have a quick chat. When I was considering my options for pursuing a PhD, while writing a Master thesis on commutative Lie algebras with his father, René Deheuvels, he was one of the people who offered to supervise me (on a topic related with empirical processes, which were his forte). Later, he suggested I wrote a very short introduction to Bayesian statistics in the Que sais-je? collection (where he published three books) and, when my manuscript was found too theoretical, he proposed to publish an expanded version in the Economica collection, which ended up being the French version of The Bayesian Choice. I also remember a very kind email he sent me while I was recovering from my climbing accident, in 2013, as a fellow climber. (For a long while, he would drive to Fontainebleau once or twice a week for bouldering.) As alluded (to) above, Deheuvels’ political views were very conservative, with a proximity to the far-right Club de l’Horloge and a mix of vieille France traditionalism and libertarianism positions. For sure, he never was shy from embarking in controversies, from defending Allègre’s climato-scepticism to backing Séralini’s controversial study on the cancerogenic effects of Mosanto’s transgenic maize.
Archive for Paris 6
Paul Deheuvels (1948-2026)
Posted in Books, Mountains, University life with tags Bayesian Choice, Bayesian statistics, Book, bouldering, Bourg-la-Reine, climatosceptic, climbing accident, Club de l'Horloge, Economica, empirical process, Fontainebleau, functional estimation, Jussieu, Monsanto, obituary, Paris, Paris 6, Paul Deheuvels, Que sais-je?, The Bayesian Choice, thumb, transgenic corn, UMPC, Université Pierre et Marie Curie on February 5, 2026 by xi'anWilliam (Bill) Strawderman (1941-2024)
Posted in pictures, Statistics, University life with tags admissibility, apple brandy, Bayesian decision theory, Bill Strawderman, Calvados, Charles Dickens, credible intervals, Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu, James-Stein estimator, minimaxity, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Paris 6, Pitman nearness, Rutgers University, shrinkage estimation, Université de Rouen on October 3, 2024 by xi'an
Earlier today, I was informed by several of our mutual friends that my long-time friend Bill Strawderman had sadly passed away yesterday, after fighting a cancer for the past months. I remember quite clearly meeting Bill in the Fall of 1988 in front of White Hall, which hosted the Cornell maths department at the time, as he was visiting George Casella from Rutgers where he spent most of his career. I was most eager to meet him as I had worked on several of his landmark papers during my PhD on shrinkage estimation, as well as a bit impressed. But his kindness, modesty, and congenial personality quickly put me at ease and we spent the rest of his visit discussing shrinkage but also literature and music. Especially Dickens! After that we met and collaborated quite regularly, to the point he started visiting France upon my return, at Paris 6 (Pierre & Marie Curie) University first, and then in Rouen, where he became a adjunct professor and launched a life-long collaboration and friendship with Dominique Fourdrinier. As my interest in shrinkage estimation dwindled along the years, we did not keep collaborating for the past two decades, but we remained in touch and I was very happy to participate in his 80th anniversary celebration in Rutgers two years ago. His contributions to the field are notable and several papers of his were part of the Bayesian classics I was giving my graduate class a few years ago. From the fabulous minimaxity paper of 1984, along with George Casella, to admissible estimators dominating the positive-part James-Stein estimator, to sufficient conditions of minimaxity for proper Bayes estimators, to decision theoretic properties of Bayesian credible interval estimators, to loss estimation, not to mention his more applied side… Besides his fabulous sense of humour, which made many evenings with him memorable, I will also cherish the memory of a bon vivant who liked good food and good wines, incl. the Calvados apple brandy I would bring him at each of my visits.
celebrating the career of Adrian Raftery
Posted in Books, Mountains, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags ABCDE, Adrian Raftery, applied statistics, Bayesian statistics, computational Bayesian methods, Environmental Statistics, Ireland, JSM 2024, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, Oregon, Pacific North West, Paris 6, Portland, Seattle, statistical demography, United Nations, University of Washington, USA, UW, Washington State on July 28, 2024 by xi'an
Jean-Paul Benzécri (1932-2019)
Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags analyse des correspondances, analyse des données, French statistics, ISUP, Jean-Paul Benzécri, Jussieu, obituary, Paris 6, SAS, Université de Paris, Université Pierre et Marie Curie on December 3, 2019 by xi'an
I learned last weekend that Jean-Paul Benzécri had died earlier in the week. He was a leading and charismatic figure of the French renewal in data analysis (or analyse des données) that used mostly algebraic tools to analyse large datasets, while staying as far as possible from the strong abstraction of French statistics at that time. While I did not know him on a personal basis, I remember from my lecturer years there that he used to come to Institut de Statistique de l’Université de Paris (ISUP), Université Pierre et Marie Curie, once a week and meet with a large group of younger statisticians, students and junior faculty, and then talk to them for long hours while walking back and forth along the corridor in Jussieu. Showing extreme dedication from the group as this windowless corridor was particularly ghastly! (I also remember less fondly hours spent over piles and piles of SAS printout trying to make sense of multiple graphs of projections produced by these algebraic methods and feeling there were too many degrees of freedom for them to feel rigorous enough.)
Xi'an's Og 