The past year has been fruitful for the Info-Metrics Institute. We organized two workshops on the philosophy of information (one at the
Institute and one as a special session at the centennial Turing conference in Cambridge). There were also interesting developments on the theoretical front.
The Fall 2011 workshop, Philosophy of Information, brought together many researchers representing a broad range of disciplines, varying, amongst others, from philosophy to physics and statistics, to computer science, complexity and the social sciences.
The philosophy of information, a natural component of info-metrics, is also rapidly gaining momentum, but as a young discipline it goes through a process of defining its central subject matter and core research questions. Three issues, in my view, are important in this respect:
1) The notion of information should be studied in the context of its various rigorous mathematical formulations. Any attempt to treat information as a general philosophical notion, without any formal exactness, immediately collapses into the traditional conundrums of epistemology and metaphysics;
2) The notion of information has deep historical roots that go back to the pre-Socratics; and
3) Theoretical complexity theory, as it emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, sheds new light on important philosophical problems, notably induction.
The Info-Metrics Institute is an ideal environment to discuss and develop these ideas and the philosophical connections between information, information processing and complexity. We look forward to continuing those discussions and furthering related research in the coming years.
-Pieter Adriaans, Member
What a year! In the 2011-2012 Academic Year, the Info-metrics
Institute generated a remarkable amount and range of activity. By any measure, we had an extraordinarily successful year. From staging conferences, to hosting scholars for seminars and research collaborations, and to delivering advanced material to graduate students and professionals, the Institute confirmed its niche as the go-to place for advancing and disseminating insights on info-metrics. One of the most satisfying aspects of the Institute’s mission has been to demonstrate that info-metrics is a multidisciplinary enterprise. The
Institute provides a rare venue for genuine and fruitful interactions across disciplines.
The extent of participation in our activities reached new highs. Scholars came from far and wide, from outstanding universities and government agencies to learn more about developments in info-metrics and how they apply across several disciplines. We attracted 67 participants to our
October 2011 Philosophy of Information workshop, followed by 83 to our November 2011
Shrinkage Estimation workshop, and then topped by 146 participants at our March 2012

Information and Econometrics of Networks workshop. In addition, we made significant progress in developing our website and in involving PhD students. For a small Institute, this record is extraordinary. For the coming year, we plan to accomplish more in disseminating interesting findings from our workshops, conferences, and research activities.
We are proud of our efforts so far to establish a home for scholars and others eager to innovate and learn about info-metrics. At the same time, we look forward to a future that extends the field and communicates the valuable and continuing contributions of info-metrics.
- Robert Lerman, Chair
Even though the interdisciplinary approach is one of the appealing features of the Institute, I am glad, as a financial econometrician, to report how much the Institute research agenda is topical in my field.
While Mark Levonian, Senior Deputy of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) was emphasizing the importance of control of
“model risk” (see fall 2011 Newsletter of Info-Metrics institute), this concern underlies many recent developments of modern econometrics that are at the core of our research agenda. Under the general terminology of “ill-posed inverse problems”, econometricians include various needs of inference regarding infinite dimensional objects with limited information. This implies dangerous discontinuities in calibration procedures that make the model risk even more detrimental. An information-based approach is typically well-suited as compellingly exemplified in recent conferences of the Institute about shrinkage and nonparametric approaches. Applications to financial econometrics include portfolio choice with a large number of assets, derivative pricing with time-varying parameters, etc. The Advisory Board would gladly consider and support even more initiatives and interactions with practitioners of quantitative finance on these topics.
- Eric Renault, Member