Talk in Oxford

Today I gave a talk at the Kernel Monday in Oxford, to talk about Kernel Sequential Monte Carlo (slides). Apart from meeting Dino Sejdinovic  and Brooks Paige again, I also had the chance to get Monsieur Doucets input on some questions. The same ones I got input on from Dino and Brooks later on.

Always amazed by how this town is exactly like beloved Tübingen where I did my undergrad – maybe after adding some ingredients that seem very anachronistic (to me). I also keep on thinking (and Oxford obviously triggers that) that Germany has been overdoing it with its comparatively Anti-Elite research policy, a reaction to Nazi focus on elites. I think some more elitism might be necessary for good research, but its a thin red line: elitism clearly breeds randomness. It’s similar to overfitting/high variance: when you can’t actually predict the future merit of people with high accuracy but still act as if you could.

The picture is some pretty college in Oxford. I’m agnostic with respect to its name.