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.

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:

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.
'A colorful watercolor illustration of a robot sitting at a desk with a typewriter infront of the robot. Generated with stable diffusion. Prompt: watercolor illustration, adorable robot, desk lamp, sitting at a typewriter, chair, desk, clear, straight lines'
How I Write with ChatGPT
OpenAI's ChatGPT is viewed as entertaining but not useful because it makes up facts. But I find it incredibly valuable for writing. Here is how I use it.
An image generated from one of my landscape photos using Stable Diffusion with img2img to make it look more like an oil painting. It shows yellow flowers, with a forest behind them. The Jura Mountains loom behind the forest, and the sky is bright blue with some large white clouds.
AI, Artists, and Technology
AI generated art took off with the open-source release of Stable Diffusion, leaving some artists worried. As an artist and machine learning engineer, here is my take.
Black and white photo from around 1920 of men in suits with hats crowded around a car that has driven over a curb and lost its front left wheel.
SWITRS: Pedestrian Safety on Halloween
Halloween can be a dangerous time for pedestrians. In this post, I explore the statistics on pedestrian-vehicle collisions, including when these incidents are most likely to occur.