The Padova trip

Saturday, September 18, 2010, 9.36 a.m. (in the train)

I am just returning from a week long journey in Padova, Italy. I attended the course "Statistical methods for genome-enabled selection" given by Daniel Gianola and Gustavo de los Campos, dealing with Bayesian statistics, machine learning and other statistical tools that can be used in evaluation of genomic information.

The group of attendants was very diverse, consisting mainly from Italians of course, but also people from Slovenia, Slovakia, Brazil, Indonesia, Australia/Ireland, Austria, US and others.  The content was very advanced (as one can expect from prof. Gianola), but it was presented enthusiastically and sometimes with very funny commentary (as one can expect on prof. Gianola).

I also liked the course not because of its content, but also because it helped some the new ideas to pop up in my mind. In particular it drove my attention to machine learning. I knew also before that something like this exists, but until now I omitted the topic. After this week it seems that I will dive into it more deeply. Gregor Gorjanc mentioned a video site dealing with Machine learning, perhaps this is a good place to start.

At the end of this short post I also would like to thank you Alessio Cecchinato for the great organization! 

Update: Here is a video showing a part of the course.