Data points: a musing on Enron
One of the dafter memes going around these days is ‘the plural of anecdote is not data’. Actually, technically true (the singular of data is datum), but at least in human sciences, I do wonder what...
View ArticleUnderstanding the US military suicide rate
The wall art created by Sebastian Errazuriz (bad boy! bad statistics! no cookie! no link!), comparing combat deaths in Iraq with suicides, has made the rounds around the internet. It’s a dramatic...
View ArticleThe state of Julia
Via Julie Green’s twitter, I came across, again, of one of John Myles White’s articles on Julia’s role, from a year and a bit ago, trying to position Julia within data science. A year on, some things...
View ArticleDocker for data geeks
Docker is a fantastic little tool. It allows for self-contained environments that are pre-compiled and can then be executed without much hassle on the target device. As such, it’s a data scientist’s...
View ArticleDear Manager
For some reason, ever since I was a small child, other people came to me to vent. I like listening and I am generally a fairly patient guy, I guess. In high school, classmates and friends (and...
View ArticleThis is why we can’t have nice things
I had a university criminal law lecturer, way back in the day, who had an expression called ‘self-organising stupid’. Self-organising stupid is why otherwise sane people suddenly start doing crazy...
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The sinful algorithm
In 1318, amidst a public sentiment that was less than enthusiastic about King Edward II, a young clerk from Oxford, John Deydras of Powderham, claimed to be the rightful ruler of England. He spun a...
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A deep learning
There are posts that are harder to write than others. This one perhaps has been one of the hardest. It took me the best part of four months and dozens of rewrites. Because it’s about something I love....
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Are you looking for a data science sensei?
Maybe you’re a junior data scientist, maybe you’re a software developer who wants to go into data science, or perhaps you’ve dabbled in data for years in Excel but are ready to take the next step. If...
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Bayesian reasoning in clinical diagnostics: a primer.
We know, from the source of eternal wisdom that is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, that insufficient math education is the basis of the entire Western economy.1 This makes Bayesian logic and...
View ArticleStructuring R projects
There are some things that I call Smith goods:1 things I want, nay, require, but hate doing. A clean room is one of these – I have a visceral need to have some semblance of tidiness around me, I just...
View ArticleStructuring R projects
There are some things that I call Smith goods:1) things I want, nay, require, but hate doing. A clean room is one of these – I have a visceral need to have some semblance of tidiness around me, I just...
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Fun things to do with Graph configurations in Dash
So there you are, with your gorgeous Dash app, generating gorgeous plots. And because this is the 21st century, you use Plotly’s built-in plot download functionality (little camera in the hover bar)....
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Five non-data science books for data scientists
Every year, the Commandant of the Marine Corps publishes a reading list of books that often only bear on warfighting tangentially at best. The idea behind this is that those entrusted with the lives...
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