NIPS 2015 Review

NIPS 2015 was bigger than ever, literally: at circa 3700 attendees this was roughly twice as many attendees as last year, which in turn was roughly twice as many as the previous year. This is clearly unsustainable, but given the frenzied level of vendor and recruiting activities, perhaps there is room to grow. The main conference is single track, however, and already 3 days long: so even more action is moving to the poster sessions, which along with the workshops creates the feel of a diverse collection of smaller conferences. Obviously, my view of the action will be highly incomplete and biased towards my own interests. Reinforcement learning continues to ascend, extending the enthusiasm and energy from ICML.