Windows update: JAGS 4.3.1 is released

JAGS version 4.3.1 is now available from Sourceforge. This is a patch update with a singular purpose: to allow a new Windows binary to be built using the Rtools42 toolchain.

JAGS is built with the same compiler as R on Windows in order to maintain binary compatibility. Hence we need to recompile JAGS for Windows whenever the compiler used for R changes. The forthcoming release of R 4.2.0 on 22 April features a major change in the compiler used for the Windows version. This change has been well publicized and documented in a series of blog posts by Tomas Kalibera. The fundamental reason for the change is to move to the Microsoft Universal C Runtime (UCRT) which allows native support for UTF-8.

One of the biggest user-visible changes is that the compiler no longer supports 32-bit builds. R 4.2.0 for Windows is 64-bit only and the same is true of JAGS 4.3.1 on Windows. Tomas made the necessary changes to the JAGS installer to make it 64-bit only – as well as fixing a few installer bugs – and these changes are incorporated into JAGS 4.3.1. Many thanks to Tomas for this.

If you are not on Windows then there is absolutely no reason for you to upgrade. The JAGS library and modules are unchanged from the last release. The only changes are in the Windows installer and in the installation documentation.

If you are on Windows then you should delay upgrading JAGS until the release of R 4.2.0 because JAGS 4.3.1 is incompatible with the current release of R.

Apologies to everyone who was hoping for more substantial changes in the next release of JAGS. I promise that JAGS 5.0.0 is on its way.

SPE 2018

The 2018 edition of the long-running Statistical Practice in Epidemiology using R (SPE) course will take place in Lyon, Fance on 20-24 June 2018 at the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The deadline for applications is 1 April.

If you want to spread the word in our department, please print off the A4 flyer.

JAGS 4.3.0 is released

The source tarball for JAGS 4.3.0 is now available from Sourceforge. Binary distributions will be available later. See the updated manual for details of the features in the new version. This version is fully compatible with the current version of rjags on CRAN.

Postdoctoral opportunity at IARC

There is an opportunity at IARC for a postdoctoral statistician to work on a challenging problem with a big impact.

JAGS tutorial at useR! 2017

I am giving a pre-conference tutorial on JAGS at useR! 2017 in Brussels on 4 July. You can see the outline of the tutorial on the conference website along with the other tutorials being given the same day.

This is my first pre-conference tutorial. Last year I gave a three day course on JAGS at the University of Zurich, so I have plenty material. My main problem is not over-filling the 3-hour time slot.

A Bayesian Information Criterion for Singular Models

On Wednesday, Mathias Drton and I will be presenting a read paper on Bayesian model choice for singular models at the Royal Statistical Society in London. You can read more about it on the RSS web site , where you can also download a preprint. The paper is scheduled to appear, with the discussion, in Series B of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society next year.

The CRAN package sBIC by Luca Weihs implements the ideas in the paper and includes a series of vignettes that allow you to step through some of the examples in the paper.

More postdoctoral opportunities at IARC

If you want to want to work with R and JAGS on a hard multivariate measurement error problem in nutritional epidemiology, then take a look at this advert.

http://www.iarc.fr/en/vacancies/postdoc/postdoc_NEP_June2015.pdf

IARC is based in Lyon, France. For informal queries approach me or my colleague Pietro Ferrari who is the PI on this project.

DSC 2014, Day 2

This will be somewhat shorter summary of the second day of DSC 2014. There was a wider variety of presentations today, but I am only going to discuss those that touched on the main theme of the day, which was reproducibility.

DSC 2014. Day 1

Peter Dalgaard, Deepayan Sarkar and Martin Maechler in Brixen

This is a report of the first day of the Directions in Statistical Computing (DSC) conference that took place in Brixen, Italy (See here for an introduction). Performance enhancements were the main theme of the day, covering not just improvements to R itself but alternate language implementations.

Rencontres R, Lyon 27-28 June

Last year, the first French-speaking R conference, “Rencontres R”  was held in Bordeaux.  The meeting was a great success, and a second one will be  held in Lyon on 27 and 28 June 2013.

The abstract submission deadline of 7 April is fast approaching. Three types of presentation are planned for the  meeting:

• 20 min regular talks,
• 6 min Lightning Talks,
• Posters.

To submit an abstract,  follow the instructions on the conference web site.