#29 Model Assessment, Non-Parametric Models, And Much More, with Aki Vehtari

I’ll be honest here: I had a hard time summarizing this episode for you, and, let’s face it, it’s all my guest’s fault! Why? Because Aki Vehtari works on so many interesting projects that it’s hard to sum them all up, even more so because he was very generous with his time for this episode! But let’s try anyway, shall we?So, Aki is an Associate professor in computational probabilistic modeling at Aalto University, Finland. You already heard his delightful Finnish accent on episode 20, with Andrew Gelman and Jennifer Hill, talking about their latest book, « Regression and other stories ». He is also a co-author of the popular and awarded book « Bayesian Data Analysis », Third Edition, and a core-developer of the seminal probabilistic programming framework Stan.An enthusiast of open-source software, Aki is a core-contributor to the ArviZ package and has been involved in many free software projects such as GPstuff for Gaussian processes and ELFI for likelihood inference.His numerous research interests are Bayesian probability theory and methodology, especially model assessment and selection, non-parametric models (such as Gaussian processes), feature selection, dynamic models, and hierarchical models.We talked about all that — and more — on this episode, in the context of his teaching at Aalto and the software-assisted Bayesian workflow he’s currently working on with a group of researchers.Our theme music is « Good Bayesian », by Baba Brinkman (feat MC Lars and Mega Ran). Check out his awesome work at https://bababrinkman.com/ !Thank you to my Patrons for making this episode possible!Yusuke Saito, Avi Bryant, Ero Carrera, Brian Huey, Giuliano Cruz, Tim Gasser, James Wade, Tradd Salvo, Adam Bartonicek, William Benton, Alan O'Donnell, Mark Ormsby, Demetri Pananos, James Ahloy, Jon Berezowski, Robin Taylor, Thomas Wiecki, Chad Scherrer, Vincent Arel-Bundock, Nathaniel Neitzke, Zwelithini Tunyiswa, Elea McDonnell Feit, Bertrand Wilden, James Thompson, Stephen Oates, Gian Luca Di Tanna, Jack Wells, Matthew Maldonado, Ian Costley, Ally Salim, Larry Gill, Joshua Duncan, Ian Moran, Paul Oreto, Colin Caprani, George Ho and Colin Carroll.Visit https://www.patreon.com/learnbayesstats to unlock exclusive Bayesian swag ;)Links from the show:New podcast website: https://www.learnbayesstats.com/Rate LBS on Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/learning-bayesian-statistics-932588Aki's website: https://users.aalto.fi/~ave/Aki's educational material: https://avehtari.github.io/Aki on GitHub: https://github.com/avehtariAki on Twitter: https://twitter.com/avehtariBayesian Data Analysis, 3rd edition: https://www.routledge.com/Bayesian-Data-Analysis/Gelman-Carlin-Stern-Dunson-Vehtari-Rubin/p/book/9781439840955Bayesian Data Analysis course material:

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Are you a researcher or data scientist / analyst / ninja? Do you want to learn Bayesian inference, stay up to date or simply want to understand what Bayesian inference is? Then this podcast is for you! You'll hear from researchers and practitioners of all fields about how they use Bayesian statistics, and how in turn YOU can apply these methods in your modeling workflow. When I started learning Bayesian methods, I really wished there were a podcast out there that could introduce me to the methods, the projects and the people who make all that possible. So I created "Learning Bayesian Statistics", where you'll get to hear how Bayesian statistics are used to detect black matter in outer space, forecast elections or understand how diseases spread and can ultimately be stopped. But this show is not only about successes -- it's also about failures, because that's how we learn best. So you'll often hear the guests talking about what *didn't* work in their projects, why, and how they overcame these challenges. Because, in the end, we're all lifelong learners! My name is Alex Andorra by the way, and I live in Estonia. By day, I'm a data scientist and modeler at the PyMC Labs consultancy. By night, I don't (yet) fight crime, but I'm an open-source enthusiast and core contributor to the python packages PyMC and ArviZ. I also love election forecasting and, most importantly, Nutella. But I don't like talking about it – I prefer eating it. So, whether you want to learn Bayesian statistics or hear about the latest libraries, books and applications, this podcast is for you -- just subscribe! You can also support the show and unlock exclusive Bayesian swag on Patreon!