# Hierarchical models

## Evidence of bias in the Eurovision song contest: modelling the votes using Bayesian hierarchical models

With [Marta Blangiardo](http://www.statistica.it/marta)

## Bayesian computations for Value of Information measures using Gaussian processes, INLA and Moment Matching

With [Anna Heath](https://sites.google.com/site/annaheathstats/) and [Ioanna Manolopoulou](http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucakima/)

## INXS

This is now borderline very old, although sadly not out of trend… In May/early June, Marta, Michela, Monica and I, together with colleagues at the Italian Statistical Institute, have worked on a paper to model the excess mortality due to COVID-19, in Italy. I think this is something that lots of people have done/tried to do — not that we’ve done it better necessarily; but I think it’s important and interesting to realise that there is no such as thing as the “true” excess mortality (due to anything, for that matter).

## Happy Birthday

My colleague (and lovely person!) Bianca forwarded me an advert for a very interesting event, she is organising at UCL. This is a celebration for the 80th birthday of Harvey Goldstein. The event will be a celebration of Statistics, honouring Harvey Goldstein’s work and with contributions from some of his closest collaborators. Speakers will give a retrospective of their work with Harvey, before he delivers the prestigious Otto Wolff Lecture.

## Almost full

We’re getting closer to the deadline for registration to our summer school. There are some more places available, though and we are actually keeping the process very “informal”. So that we’ll probably allow people to keep registering (if we have still rooms, which we do for now) until later in May — I think around mid-May. The registration page is here. Interestingly enough, we seem to have attracted some interest from very far: we have a few participants coming all the way from Australia!

## Advancing Psychiatric Mapping Translated into Innovations for Care: PsyMaptic-A

With [James Kirkbride](https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/browse/profile?upi=JBKIR68) and Christina Ding

## 501 days of Summer (school)

As I anticipated earlier, we’re now ready to open registration for our Summer School in Florence (I was waiting for UCL to set up the registration system and thought it may take much longer than it actually did $-$ so well done UCL!). We’ll probably have a few changes here and there in the timetable $-$ we’re thinking of introducing some new topics and I think I’ll certainly merge a couple of my intro lectures, to leave some time for those…

## 500 days of Summer (school)

We’re nearly ready to advertise the 2018 edition of our Florence Summer School on Bayesian Methods in Health Economics (some posts from last year are here and here )! The dates are June 4-8 and we’ll hold it again at the CISL Centro Studi. Last year, I was very pleased with the whole experience and I think people were also very happy, so we’re planning to have more fun in a few months.

## Bayesian hierarchical model for the prediction of football results

With [Marta Blangiardo](http://www.statistica.it/marta)