About

I am a PhD candidate in statistics at UBC, where I also completed my MSc. My supervisors are Trevor Campbell and Ben Bloem-Reddy. I did my BSc in applied math at ITAM under the supervision of Ernesto Barrios.

Before coming to UBC, I was a business analytics coordinator at Pfizer. I was also part of the quick counts team during Mexico’s 2018 presidential election, working as a research assistant for Manuel Mendoza. Check this webpage if you’re interested.

In my free time, I enjoy running and road cycling around Vancouver. I also like reading; recently, I’m reading a lot of contemporary female Latin American writers—thanks mainly to recommendations from my wife Sarah.

Research interests

I am mostly interested in developing algorithms for Bayesian inference over discrete variables. This includes general-purpose methods for this setting but also specialized algorithms for specific types of discrete structures, such as directed acyclic graphs in causal discovery.

I am also interested in statistical education, and particularly in finding ways to improve and expand the teaching of Bayesian statistics in the undergraduate curricula.

News

• [August 2024] I successfully defended my thesis proposal, which means that I’m officially a PhD candidate!

• [May 2024] Our paper on a new fully-online methodology for assessing educational resources in development has been accepted to the International Conference of the Royal Statistical Society!

• [Jan 2024] Our paper on learning discrete distributions with MCMC-inspired variational flows has been accepted at AISTATS!

• [Sept 2022] Our paper on using structured and interactive resources to teach Bayesian inference has been accepted at ICOTS!

Publications

Peer-reviewed

• Mixed variational flows for discrete variables
  Gian Carlo Diluvi, Benjamin Bloem-Reddy, and Trevor Campbell
  International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, 2024
  copy bibtex   arXiv   AISTATS   code   slides   poster

• Structured, interactive resources for teaching Bayesian inference
  Gian Carlo Diluvi, Bruce Dunham, Nancy Heckman, Melissa Lee, Rodolfo Lourenzutti
  International Conference on Teaching Statistics, 2022
  copy bibtex   pdf   slides

Workshops and conferences

• Using online student focus groups in the development of new educational resources
  Gian Carlo Diluvi*, Sonja Isberg*, Bruce Dunham, Nancy Heckman, Melissa Lee
  Royal Statistical Society International Conference, 2024
  copy bibtex   arXiv   slides   poster

Theses

• Locally-adaptive boosting variational inference
  Gian Carlo Diluvi
  University of British Columbia, 2021 (MSc thesis)
  copy bibtex   pdf   code   slides

• Bayesian design of experiments for generalized linear models
  Gian Carlo Diluvi
  Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), 2018 (BSc thesis)
  copy bibtex   pdf   code

Teaching

Mentorship:

• TA trainer, department of statistics @ UBC

TAing:

• STAT 450 case studies in statistics, spring 2022 @ UBC
• STAT 302 introduction to probability, spring 2020 @ UBC
• STAT 200 elementary statistics for applications, spring 2020 @ UBC
• STAT 203 statistical methods, fall 2019 @ UBC
• EST 14102 probability II, spring and fall 2016 @ ITAM

Flexible learning: an initiative that brings together open and vetted resources to help promote the teaching and learning of introductory statistics.

Here are the resources that I have developed:

• First Bayes
  beta-binomial dashboard   normal-normal dashboard   code  

• Power and sample size calculations
  dashboard   slides   code   StatSpace

• Effective data visualization with R
  dashboard   code   StatSpace

• Understanding type I errors, type II errors, and p-values
  StatSpace

• Distribution of the p-values under the null hypothesis of a one-sample z-test
  StatSpace

Contact

If you are interested in doing an MSc or a PhD in statistics at UBC, reach out! I am happy to chat and help answer any questions you have. Don’t forget to check out the website of the UBC statistics grad student association.

Check my UBC stats webpage for contact info.

Latinx students: Canadá tiene una linda comunidad estadística latinx, tanto en Vancouver como en Toronto. Si tienes dudas o quieres ayuda en tu solicitud a un programa de posgrado, ¡contáctame!