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
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[August 2024] I successfully defended my thesis proposal, which means that I’m officially a PhD candidate!
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[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!
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[Jan 2024] Our paper on learning discrete distributions with MCMC-inspired variational flows has been accepted at AISTATS!
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[Sept 2022] Our paper on using structured and interactive resources to teach Bayesian inference has been accepted at ICOTS!
Publications
Peer-reviewed
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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
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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, 2021—2024
TAing:
- STAT 450 case studies in statistics, spring 2025 @ UBC
- 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:
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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! 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!