Pierre Alquier

Couple of Javan pond herons @ Bishan park #birds

New short paper forthcoming in Statistics & Probability Letters:

An objective non-local prior for skew-symmetric models.

arxiv.org/abs/2603.08285

This paper develops a Moment-Objective Minimum-Discrepancy (MOOMIN) Prior for testing symmetry against skew-symmetric alternatives.

Learning Functions of Halfspaces We give an algorithm that learns arbitrary Boolean functions of $k$ arbitrary halfspaces over $\mathbb{R}^n$, in the challenging distribution-free Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) learning model, ...

Well, this seems like a big deal. arxiv.org/abs/2603.087...

"This is the first algorithm that can PAC learn even intersections of two halfspaces in time 2^o(n)."

Devenir professeur à l'ESSEC || ESSEC | ESSEC Africa 📢 ESSEC Business School – Africa Campus is hiring As part of the development of its academic programs, ESSEC Business School – Africa campus is recruiting a full-time Professor in Finance (PMP). We ...

Our campus in Morocco is hiring.

www.linkedin.com/posts/esseca...

Numerical Analysis School 2026 | yannig goude Ouverture des inscriptions pour l'édition 2026 de l’École d’été d’analyse numérique, organisée conjointement par le CEA, EDF et Inria. Cet événement se tiendra au CEA Liten (Bourget du lac) et portera...

I forward a post by Yannig Goude on LinkedIn about an exciting event.

www.linkedin.com/posts/yannig...

Excellent

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Theoretical Computer Science and Algorithms Full time, fixed term for two years (with the possibility of extension) Located on the Camperdown Campus, University of Sydney Base Salary Academic Level A $109,263 - $121,054 + 17% superannuation Abo...

On the postdoc job market? "As foretold" some time ago, the Sydney Algorithms and Computing Theory group at @sydneycompsci.bsky.social is hiring postdocs (2 years, renewable) in Theoretical Computer Science and Algorithms!

usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/USYD_E... #TCSSky

Little heron @ Kallang river #birds

Didn't know that this one had a name, but it's a cute one. There's a nice "polynomial-style" proof (cf. SoS hierarchies etc.), a nice "martingale-style" proof, and probably some others too. Neat!

Chinese pond heron @ Bishan park #birds

I don't really understand why the statement requires numbers a_1 ... a_n ? The proof seems to be valid for any rv A in the interval [m,M] right? Am I missing something?

Streets of Ho Chi Minh city

Two more #birds from Vietnam: pink-necked green pigeon, and white-shouldered starling. The photo of the starling does not make justice to its elegance... But you can still see its beautiful blue eyes!

Back to Singapore tonight...

Saturday evening

Ho Chi Minh city's beautiful copper-throated sunbird (actually, this bird can also be seen in Singapore but I never met one there) #birds

Morning coffee in Ho Chi Minh city

Purple heron @ Kallang river #birds

I never noticed before how pink/red their face is when the breeding season is coming. They are really blushing 😅

In each new paper, I cite *all* my papers cited a number of times smaller than my h-index. I also bully other researchers until they do the same thing.

The good news is that Hivebrite will use AI to create your platform. So, instead of hiring people to write code, they will have 15k to do something fun with. You should be happy for them 😅

Looking for alternatives to quadratic functions for closed-form analysis in optimization? This post explores matrix Riccati dynamics and their applications to neural networks. francisbach.com/closed-form-...

Skore Is Live: Track Your Data Science Skore by Probabl: The collaboration platform for data scientists. Evaluate models, automate reports, and bridge the gap from notebooks to production.

At probabl, we're focused on improving the data-science stack.

We just made public the skore platform, augmenting the open-source library.
Our dream is that, with skore, a data scientist will not feel overwhelmed by the iterative process of data science, but empowered
blog.probabl.ai/skore-is-live

do mine eyes deceive me? a release date in the present year?

bsky.app/profile/pier...

birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/...

In this situation the real life problem is not image recognition but detection of specific targets though.
I assume Plantnet would give a different answer from Merlin bird ID 😅

Yellow-vented bulbul #birds

TODAY is the #ECCV2026 paper submission deadline! The deadline is strict. NO extensions, NO exceptions.

Check the webpage for the deadline. Hint, it’s not AoE!

Deadlines: eccv.ecva.net/Conferences/...

Yes, I mean, that was a (attempt of) joke 😅

We should find a new word for that!

😂

What, neural networks perform better than SVMs?