THE FELLOWS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR BAYESIAN ANALYSIS

I was elected as one of the founding fellows of ISBA in 2012. I helped Arnold Zellner to found the Society in 1992, wrote the preliminary constitution, and devised its name. Arnold, Gordon Kaufmann and I first registered the Society with the State of Illinois.


For pictures of all the current ISBA fellows, please click on:


      https://bayesian.org/awards/isba-fellows



                                                                     

 Me, Arnold Zellner, Gordon Kaufmann and three other Bayesians at ISBA's founding conference in the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco in 1993

                  
      

                           My co-author John Hsu of UCSB is also a founding fellow of ISBA, and here are the 17 new fellows who were elected in 2014 (pictured at the ISBA conference in Cancun)


                                                     

The Moral High Ground By Thomas Leonard in Scots translated by Scott Forster

                                                                                               

The beauty in many places: The Moral High Ground By Thomas Leonard in Scots...: The Moral High Ground   By Thomas Hoskyns Leonard    Original: We, God’s honest ones, hold ...



                                                                The Scottish Poet

                                                                 SCOTT FORSTER

                                                            on the moral high ground---
       
                                                       

MY RECENT RE-DIAGNOSIS (ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER)

                                               

I have as of the Spring of 2015, been diagnosed as suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), a physical and neurological disorder, after a lifetime of mistreatments and misdiagnoses and a fair amount of apparent bullying and two-facedness from people (including several colleagues and at least one relative) who I would have expected to be kinder to me. I have many of the symptoms of dyspraxia (e.g. clumsiness, low muscle tome, reduced sensory perceptions, reading difficulties, and lack of spatial awareness). I also have a tendency to tangentialise and to blurt out haphazard remarks during conversation. I think very much in my subconscious, which tends to get wired with a beehive of competing thoughts. My specialist thinks that the increased activity in my subconscious which is caused by my ADD is responsible for the peaks of my mathematical ability, my broad-ranging lateral thinking, and my late emerging literary abilities. My highs and lows are explainable by my ADD and not by any of the crass disorders or biochemical imbalances which have been dreamt up by the shrinks.

     At age 67 I am consequently beginning to understand how my brain works for the first time in my life. As my perceptions can be a bit more varied and colourful than for most people, I need to take time modifying, refining and clarifying them. I can then rely on my perceptions just as much as anybody else. I find periods of relaxation and meditation to be very useful in this regard.

     While I re-established my long-term memory and productivity following a long period of medication-induced ill health (2000-2011) I now find myself renewing and re-interpreting all my important memories as they flash through my consciousness, I now much better understand people's reactions to me; they of course never understood what was going on inside my head either.

     The US and UK medical professions stand indicted for not diagnosing me properly until January 2015 despite being made aware of many of the relevant symptoms, Maybe this was not totally due to their lack of medical competence, I have of course declined to take any of the dangerous medications, such as ritalin, which are so frequently used to 'punish' children and adults who suffer from ADD or ADHD

       See also MENTAL HEALTH DISCUSSIONS EDINBURGH

KEMPTOWN

                                                               KEMPTOWN

                                                   by Thomas Hoskyns Leonard

                                                            25th April 2015

                                             

                                             

                     

                        Kemptown, Camp Town,

                        In the wake of Brighton Pier

                        St. James St. draws near;

                        Corner Cafe, Morrison's, seven barbers shops

                        Where head and beard do they crop

                        Madeira Place is full of grace

                        As cross the Steines

                        The Parade the Laines does emplace

                         Artists, actors and producers

                         Wandering through the post-modernistic grime

                         Sleepless youngsters awaking to the good time

                         Rats in the flat for two fifty grand

                         But then there's the view, on the other hand

                         The swish gays in the Amsterdam drink and tweet

                         While the smart-arses in the Charles Street boisterously entreat

                         And from the pavilion the brash Prince of Florizel rolly pollys

                         To find the trannie of his dreams in the Holiest of Holies,

                       

MENTAL HEALTH DISCUSSIONS EDINBURGH

MENTAL HEALTH DISCUSSIONS EDINBURGH

The Mayflower Rose - Thomas Hoskyns Leonard

A Birthday Poem by Thomas Tallis

                                          WISHING YOU A VERY, VERY, VERY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY

                                                                    Thomas Tallis

                         

                          Three birthdays ago we met;

                          A new friendship, full of arguments

                          Discussion for hours and hours

                          Endless poetry,

                          All the time moulding ourselves

                          Into the hardened nutcases we are today

                          I’ve learnt a lot from you in many different ways

                          From Statistics to not accepting second best

                          But I’ve so learnt how to see the real Tom behind all the illness

                          How he is crazy and so full of charisma and ideas

                          As much as we argue every single day about anything at all,

                          I’d never change a thing

                          We are as we are

                          Love Tom Tom

                          Written on the occasion of Tom Leonard’s 67^th Birthday

                          24^th March 2015

                          

DOUGHNUT GROYNE BY BRIGHTON PIER: A MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE FOR SOME

 
DOUGHNUT GROYNE BY BRIGHTON PIER: A MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE FOR SOME

    Update: My ministry to North Edinburgh Quakers 22nd September 2019:

   Four years ago Thomas and I were visiting the Doughnut Groyne near Brighton Pier when the International Space Station flew by immediately above us, in the the night, a mystical experience, During the week I have watched various images of politicians attending party conferences walking  around Thomas and my old haunts on Brighton Seafront. I can only hope that they have a mystical experience too. 

                                                        DOUGHNUT GROYNE

                                                       

                                                        Thomas Hoskyns Leonard

                                                                19th April 2015


                                           Two hundred yards west of Brighton Pier,
                                         
                                           Have no doubt, have no fear,

                                           That's where in my will I'd said

                                           Should they my ashes spread.

                                           So south from Embro did we go
                                     
                                           To stay in Wayne's Place in full flow;

                                           And on the first dark night Brighton Beach

                                            Like a delicious peach did we reach;

                                           And two hundred yards did we pace

                                            To see where I'd kick the trace.


                                            Lo! What a coincidence did we perceive

                                            There on a drystone dyke stood a doughnut brand new

                                            A sphere turned into a torus

                                            Through which the world to view

                                            As if through the eye of a brontosaurus.

                                            Two hundred yards west of Brighton Pier

                                            No further and yet no more near

                                            Stood that immortal groyne,
                                       
                                            Worth ever the zillionth coin;

                                            The doughnut a Universe in itself

                                            Under the gaze of a big green elf.

                                   
                                            'My grandson will spread my ashes here' I sighed.
     
                                            'In sight of what's left of the grand West Pier.'

                                            But behold a mightier coincidence, in the skies!

                                            'There's the International Space Station!' Thomas cried

                                            And the bright light above like Beth'lem's star did shine

                                            As Venus herself to the right sipped wine.

                                            And I to my good Lord gave praise

                                            Since here to the Pearly Gates would he me raise;

                                            And my Resurrection would my dear relatives faze.

                                            Oh happy, happy Heaven.

                                            Here comes the once rustic lad from Devon.

                                            Shot of his limp, his haze, and his temporizing

                                            To a grand new dimension bravely rising

                                            Renewed zest and joy forthwith enterprising.

                                         


                                         


                                     

I am starting this blog in Brighton where I am on holiday with Thomas, and it is 18th April 2015. I will be publishing my poetry here together with other items of interest. You may also like to visit my literary home page       http://www.thomashoskynsleonard.co.uk/literary.htm   where you will also find my two self-published novels  Grand Schemes on Qinsatorix and In the Shadows of Calton Hill. I am currently completing my 'Trithagoras Trilogy' of Plays, namely the three satires

Workfare in the Royal Nuke

Grand Schemes on Qinsatorix

and Academic Life on Qinsatorix


I am a co-founder and member of the Edinburgh All Comers Writers Club which meets at 7pm every Tuesday evening in Sofi's Bar in Henderson Street in Leith


In 2014 I published my Personal History of Bayesian Statistics with John Wiley&Son (up to 1972) and the chapters for the modern era are available on my website

       http://www.thomashoskynsleonard.co.uk/personal_history_contents.htm


I am currently the Administrator for Mental Health Discussions Edinburgh

       https://www.facebook.com/groups/mentalhealthdiscussionsedinburgh/

See also www.thomashoskynsleonard.co.uk/psychiatric_home.htm

and I am actively involved in publicly campaigns regarding the widespread devastating side effects of psychiatric medications, and the brain damage which is routinely caused by ECT


      I am a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and a Founding Fellow of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis