Official event website
Description and information with detailed information on PrefStat 2025 Summer School (external)
About PrefStat
PrefStat is a permanent inter-university research and working group that aims at disseminating statistical approaches in Preference Learning, understood as modeling and analysis of preference rankings and ordinal data related to preference analysis. PrefStat organizes specialized sessions at international conferences, workshops, and a summer school every year in a different location.
PrefStat 2025: Second International Summer School on Preference Learning for Ranking and Ordinal Data
Organiser: University of Oslo, Integreat and Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, OCBE
Course description
PrefStat summer school is a high-level course on cutting-edge topics in the specific context of Statistical Learning from Preference Information, or Preference Learning. The course is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of preference statistics, a rapidly growing field that has gained significant attention in recent years due to the numerous application fields involving human preferences: recommender systems, Large Language Models, surveys and psychological experiments, marketing, economics, and political science. Preference learning is concerned with all data analyses involving preferences, rankings, ratings, clicking, or any kind of ordinal data. It entails modeling experiments involving a set of assessors (experts, judges, users) who express order relations about a set of items, thus being a subfield of both supervised and unsupervised statistical learning.
The school provides a deep introduction to the topic and insight into more challenging tasks that are of interest in modern applications, such as handling partial, unstructured, exogenous information, individual preference prediction, and importance feature selection. PrefStat 2025 combines lectures delivered by internationally leading scholars on the specific designated topic and supervised practical tutorials.
Lecturers
- Marta Crispino, Bank of Italy, Italy
- Luca Coraggio, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
- Antonio D’Ambrosio, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
- Anne-Marie George, University Of Oslo, Norway
- Kate Lee, University of Auckland, New Zealand
- Cristina Mollica, University of Rome “Sapienza”, Italy
- Geoff Nicholls, University of Oxford, UK
- Maurizio Romano, University of Cagliari, Italy
- Øystein Sørensen, University of Oslo, Norway
- Luca Tardella, University of Rome “Sapienza”, Italy
Target groups
Researchers in the area of data science, machine learning, statistics, and related fields. Master students with basic skills in machine learning and statistics are also welcome. PrefStat aims to provide participants with a solid foundation in preference learning, and to equip them with the skills and knowledge necessary to apply these methods to real-world problems.
Registration and fees
Registration is complete when both payment link and registration form are filled out. All lecturers are exempt from payment.
Registration form (Deadline 2 June 2025)
Payment link (includes all service fees - Epay and card)
Registration deadline: 2 June 2025
- Conference fee (Monday 2 June)
- 600 EUR + 100 EUR (conference dinner)
Registration fees include activities as part of the programme, course materials, wi-fi connection, lunches & coffee breaks, reception, and the social excursion in the beautiful Oslo surroundings on Wednesday afternoon. Group dinner (Thursday) is optional (additional cost 100 EUR), service fees (card and Epay).
This fee is exempt from VAT due to teaching/educational purposes.
Child care: we can offer child care to the early-bird registered school participants (deadline expired on 30 April), up to a limit depending on the number of requests and on-site capacity. We will follow a first-contact first-served policy.
Cancellation and refund
Upon personal request to organisers, after 2 June no-refund policy.
Accommodation
All attendees are free to organise their own accommodation in Oslo.
The organisers have reserved number of rooms at Cochs Pensjonat 29 June- 4 July (reservation deadline has expired). Payment for accommodation at Cochs is to be made directly to the hotel upon check-in. In case of a no-show, guests will still be charged.
Directions and practicalities
Participants can use our guide to find their way to and around Oslo.
The summer school takes place at the following address:
University of Oslo, Blindern campus
Moltke Moes vei 35
Niels Henrik Abels hus
12th floor, room 1259
Location: https://www.uio.no/english/about/getting-around/areas/blindern/bl14/
Upon entering the Niels Henrik Abels hus, you will find elevators to your right. Take the elevator to the 12th floor, walk into the corridor either to your left or right, and walk towards the further end to the room 1259.
Information regarding lunches and dinner is upcoming.
Programme
Organising committee
- Chair of the Organizing Committee: Associate Professor Valeria Vitelli, University of Oslo
- Administrative support: Higher Executive Officer Olesia Fesenko, University of Oslo
- Ida Scheel, University of Oslo
- Riccardo De Bin, University of Oslo