#44 Building Bayesian Models at scale, with Rémi Louf

Bonjour my dear Bayesians! Yes, it was bound to happen one day — and this day has finally come. Here is the first ever 100% French speaking ‘Learn Bayes Stats’ episode! Who is to blame, you ask? Well, who better than Rémi Louf?

Rémi currently works as a senior data scientist at Ampersand, a big media marketing company in the US. He is the author and maintainer of several open source libraries, including MCX and BlackJAX. He holds a PhD in statistical Physics, a Masters in physics from the Ecole Normale Supérieure and a Masters in Philosophy from Oxford University.

I think I know what you’re wondering: how the hell do you go from physics to philosophy to Bayesian stats?? Glad you asked, as it was my first question to Rémi! He’ll also tell us why he created MXC and BlackJax, what his main challenges are when working on open-source projects, and what the future of PPLs looks like to him.

Our theme music is « Good Bayesian », by Baba Brinkman (feat MC Lars and Mega Ran). Check out his awesome work at https://bababrinkman.com/ !

Thank you to my Patrons for making this episode possible!

Yusuke Saito, Avi Bryant, Ero Carrera, Brian Huey, Giuliano Cruz, Tim Gasser, James Wade, Tradd Salvo, Adam Bartonicek, William Benton, Alan O'Donnell, Mark Ormsby, Demetri Pananos, James Ahloy, Jon Berezowski, Robin Taylor, Thomas Wiecki, Chad Scherrer, Nathaniel Neitzke, Zwelithini Tunyiswa, Elea McDonnell Feit, Bertrand Wilden, James Thompson, Stephen Oates, Gian Luca Di Tanna, Jack Wells, Matthew Maldonado, Ian Costley, Ally Salim, Larry Gill, Joshua Duncan, Ian Moran, Paul Oreto, Colin Caprani, George Ho, Colin Carroll, Nathaniel Burbank, Michael Osthege, Rémi Louf, Clive Edelsten, Henri Wallen, Hugo Botha, Vinh Nguyen, Raul Maldonado, Marcin Elantkowski, Tim Radtke, Adam C. Smith, Will Kurt, Andrew Moskowitz, Hector Munoz, Marco Gorelli, Simon Kessell, Bradley Rode, Patrick Kelley, Rick Anderson, Casper de Bruin and Philippe Labonde.

Visit https://www.patreon.com/learnbayesstats to unlock exclusive Bayesian swag ;)

Links from the show:

Rémi on GitHub: https://github.com/rlouf
Rémi on Twitter: https://twitter.com/remilouf
Rémi's website: https://rlouf.github.io/
BlackJAX -- Fast & modular sampling library: https://github.com/blackjax-devs/blackjax
MCX -- Probabilistic programs on CPU & GPU, powered by JAX: https://github.com/rlouf/mcx
aeppl, Tools for a PPL in Aesara: https://github.com/aesara-devs/aeppl
French Presidents' popularity dashboard: https://www.pollsposition.com/popularity
How to model presidential approval (in French): https://anchor.fm/pollspolitics/episodes/10-Comment-Modliser-la-Popularit-e121jh2
LBS #23, Bayesian Stats in Business & Marketing, with Elea McDonnel Feit: https://www.learnbayesstats.com/episode/23-bayesian-stats-in-business-and-marketing-analytics-with-elea-mcdonnel-feit
LBS #30, Symbolic Computation & Dynamic Linear Models, with Brandon Willard: https://www.learnbayesstats.com/episode/symbolic-computation-dynamic-linear-models-brandon-willard