Writings

View as Markdown Below you can find my writings on machine learning, data science, and technology. Enjoy!

• 
  My PhD Thesis, In Short
  I graduated from the University of Minnesota in June, 2015. I wrote an esoteric thesis about Z boson decay, which I explain here.
• 
  Making Animations Quickly with Matplotlib Blitting
  Animating plots is great way to show how some quantity changes in time, but they can be slow to generate in matplotlib! Thankfully, blitting makes animating much faster! Learn how to here!
• 
  The Typical Successful Career Starts with Rejection
  When I applied for graduate school I was rejected, not by a few good grad schools, but by all of them! But thanks to a little kindness, I was able to continue onward.
• 
  Rise and Fall of Popular Names
  The popularity of baby names rises and falls based on the tastes of each generation of parents. Are their preferences the same for boy's names as for girl's names? I plot the trends to find out!
• 
  Should I Get a PhD?
  In 2009, having little or no money in my purse, I thought I would go to graduate school in physics. But was it the right idea? And should you follow in my footsteps?
• 
  Fate Dice: Statistics Testing Is Hard
  A few months ago I tested my Fate dice for biases. Now, I retest the "biased" set and see if it really is unlucky! Unfortunately, things aren't so clear...
• 
  How Fast Does a Raspberry Pi Reboot?
  My Raspberry Pis have to reboot every evening to avoid a memory leak. As they say, when you have a memory leak, make animated plots to see how fast they reboot!
• 
  Updated Caltrain Visual Schedule
  In July, Caltrain updated their weekend schedule to allow time to do track work, so I updated my Marey/Ibry/Serjev visual schedules to see how it changed!
• 
  Tech Interviews: Respect Everyone’s Time
  Interviewing is notoriously agonizing for both the candidate and the company! But it could be much better! Here I propose one guiding principle to make it easier on everyone.
• 
  Fate Dice Intervals
  What does a "normal" distribution of rolls from a fair set of Fate dice look like? There are a lot of ways to estimate it. In this post I'll go through four methods.

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