Sabtu Berkah

I am giving a talk next week for the Data Science Group in Cambridge.  It's part six of the Leading Analytics series: Building your Analytical Skill set Export   Tell a friend   Share Tuesday, September 24, 2013 6:00 PM to  8:00 PM Microsoft 1 Memorial Dr,  Cambridge ,  MA   ( map ) Commons Price:  $10.00 /per person Refund policy The subtitle is "How to be a good consumer of statistical analysis."  My goal is to present (in about 70 minutes) some basic statistical knowledge a manager should have to work with an analysis team. Part of the talk is about how to interact with the team: I will talk about an exploration process that is collaborative between analysts and managers, and iterative . And then I'll introduce topics in statistics, including lots of material from this blog: The CDF: the best, and sadly underused, way to visualize distributions. Scatterplots, correlation a...

I am supposed to turn in the manuscript for Think Bayes next week, but I couldn't resist adding a new chapter.  I was adding a new exercise, based on an example from Tom Campbell-Ricketts, author of the Maximum Entropy blog. He got the idea from E. T. Jaynes, author of the classic  Probability Theory: The Logic of Science.   Here's my paraphrase Suppose that a radioactive source emits particles toward a Geiger counter at an average rate of  r  particles per second, but the counter only registers a fraction,  f , of the particles that hit it. If  f  is 10% and the counter registers 15 particles in a one second interval, what is the posterior distribution of  n , the actual number of particles that hit the counter, and  r , the average rate particles are emitted? I decided to write a solution, and then I liked it so much I decided to make it a chapter.  You can read the new chapter here.  And then you can take on the...

This weekend I gave a talk entitled "Python Epistemology" for PyCon Taiwan 2013.  I would have loved to be in Taipei for the talk, but sadly I was in an empty room in front of a teleconference screen. Python Epistemology: PyCon Taiwan 2013 Python Epistemology: PyCon Taiwan 2013 Open Python Epistemology: PyCon Taiwan 2013 As I explained, the title is more grandiose than accurate.  In general, epistemology is the theory of knowledge: how we know what we think we know, etc.  This talk is mostly about what Python has taught me about programming, and how programming in Python has changed the way I learn and the way I think. About programming, I wrote: Programming is not about translating a well-known solution into code, it is about discovering solutions by writing code, and then creating the language to ex press them. I gave an example using the Counter data structure to check for anagrams: from collections import Counter def is_anagram(w...

I've just added a new chapter to Think Bayes ; it is a case study based on a class project two of my students worked on this semester.  It presents "The Red Line Problem," which is the problem of predicting the time until the next train arrives, based on the number of passengers on the platform. Here's the introduction: In Boston, the Red Line is a subway that runs north-south from Cambridge to Boston.  When I was working in Cambridge I took the Red Line from Kendall Square to South Station and caught the commuter rail to Needham.  During rush hour Red Line trains run every 7--8 minutes, on average. When I arrived at the station, I could estimate the time until the next train based on the number of passengers on the platform.  If there were only a few people, I inferred that I just missed a train and expected to wait about 7 minutes.  If there were more passengers, I expected the train to arrive sooner.  But if there were a large number of passengers...

Recently I was talking with an Olin student who will start graduate school in the fall, and I suggested a few things I wish I had done in grad school.  And then I thought I should write them down.  So here is my list of Software Engineering Practices All Graduate Students Should Adopt : Version Control Every keystroke you type should be under version control from the time you initiate a project until you retire it.  Here are the reasons: 1) Everything you do will be backed up.  But instead of organizing your backups by date (which is what most backup systems do) they are organized by revision.  So, for example, if you break something, you can roll back to an earlier working revision. 2) When you are collaborating with other people, you can share repositories.  Version control systems are well designed for managing this kind of collaboration.  If you are emailing documents back and forth, you are doing it wrong. 3) At various stages ...