Hi there!

I’m Alex Gude, a data scientist with a passion for plots and algorithms, but also cycling and photography. I got my start in the valley at Insight Data Science. In my previous life, I was a high energy particle physicist at CERN and a cosmologist at Lawrence Berkeley Labs.

I write about whatever catches my attention here on this site; mostly that means data science, machine learning, deep learning, and software development related topics. My writings on deep learning from my time at Lab41 can be found at Gab41 and rehosted on this page. If you’re interested in my thoughts in real time (as well as sneak peaks at what I’m writing), follow me at @alex_gude on Twitter and Mastodon, or at the handle @alexgude.com on BlueSky.

The code that I write lives on my Github page. Check it out! Bug reports and pull requests welcome!

Recent Writings

Below you can find my most recent articles and projects; older ones can be found here:

A pencil drawing of a robot inspecting a car. Prompt: A simple color pencil drawing a robot, inspecting a car, holding a clipboard, white background.
Using Large Language Models To Clean Data
Manually fixing messy data is tedious and slow. But thankfully, LLMs are pretty good are piecing together mangled text. Read on to find out how!
RadWagon 3 loaded with clothing and balance bikes in the grass.
A 1850-mile Review of the RadWagon 3
The RadWagon electric cargo bike was a savior during lockdown family rides, but frustrating maintenance and support issues disappoint. Read on for my in-depth review.
A colorful pencil drawing of two robots fussing with some techno-thingy between them. Generated with stable diffusion. Prompt: A simple color pencil drawing a ((cute robot)), plugging cat5 cable into a network switch, white background
Machine Learning Deployment:
Return Actions, Not Scores
A poorly designed machine learning model API will leave you trapped. Properly hiding your implementation will make life much easier!
An impressionistic painting based on 'Night Before the Exam' by Leonid Pasternak, generated with Stable Diffusion using img2img from the original. The painting shows four students sitting around a kitchen table studying for a exam. Prompt: Impressionistic painting, four men studying at a desk, smoking, looking over papers, window in the background.
Claude Solves SAT Analogies
Word2Vec failed to solve SAT analogies, can modern language models do better? A small test of Anthropic's Claude LLM.
A colorful illustration of a two robots sitting at a desk with with empty paper and books infront of them. One is holding a pencil. Generated with stable diffusion. Prompt: A drawing of a cute robot, color, writing with a pen, sitting at a desk
When Are Large Language Models Useful?
Large language models (LLMs) are incredibly valuable tools, but they're not for everything. Here's a simple rule to know when to use them and when to avoid them.