XL Files
Contributing Editor Xiao-Li Meng has attended some great meetings, with exotic acronyms, over the summer. He writes: No, these are not Chinglish or Pinyin. If you haven’t heard of ISIPTA-ECSQARU, then you are in the good company of 95–99% of statisticians and probabilists. I certainly hadn’t, until BFF4 (https://imstat.org/2017/05/xl-files-bayesian-fiducial-and-frequentist-bff4ever/

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Contributing Editor Xiao-Li Meng (who is also the new President-Elect) writes about two of the IMS special invited lectures he was inspired by at the Joint Statistical Meetings: JSM has been a magnet for me since 1989—only once I had to depart on Tuesday due to a scheduling conflict. But…

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Contributing Editor Xiao-Li Meng writes: A good number of people have asked me about what have been the best and the worst parts of being a dean. Whereas the worst part should only be shared over two glasses of Long Island iced tea (my first and still the most memorable…

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Xiao-Li Meng writes: I always enjoy making new friends, but I didn’t know the acronym “BFF” until June 17, 2014, when I attended ICSA-KISS Applied Statistical Symposium (acronym wisely avoided) in Portland, OR. A group of us got together after presenting and attending talks on distributional inferences because of our…

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In last issue’s XL-Files, Xiao-Li Meng set a picture quiz. Nobody has yet correctly identified everyone in the pictures below. If you can, and you’re over 21, you’ll be invited to a “libation and inspiration” at JSM 2017 to celebrate the lives of the nine great statisticians who passed…

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