All Posts · Asterisk

2024

Win the election, then hammer disinformation Mon 30 September 2024

Love and warmth Thu 05 September 2024

We own the science Wed 29 May 2024

Saw that everywhere Tue 07 May 2024

The shoes were still there Sun 31 March 2024

Meritocracy and valor Wed 13 March 2024

Nissan knows what you did last summer Mon 01 January 2024

2023

Candor, commitment, courage and competence Thu 27 July 2023

Where do we disagree? Wed 05 July 2023

Risk from artificial intelligence Mon 01 May 2023

Achieve! Mon 01 May 2023

Google Bard appears to admit it was directed what to say about masks for Covid-19 Mon 01 May 2023

Die playing our own thing Fri 21 April 2023

Corrupt all the way down Wed 29 March 2023

2022

Core goal of undergraduate education Fri 11 November 2022

Novel morality Sun 11 September 2022

No fog Sun 11 September 2022

Covid school closures, and other deviations Mon 22 August 2022

Unscientific, unsafe, ableist, fatphobic, and unethical Wed 17 August 2022

Interested in politics? Study mathematics. Tue 09 August 2022

Postmodern consent Tue 09 August 2022

Calm capable women Sun 07 August 2022

To be an individual Sun 07 August 2022

Popper against proportional representation Sat 06 August 2022

Better educated, more irrational Sat 06 August 2022

Going at it blind Sat 06 August 2022

Education of the heart Tue 02 August 2022

What is Critical Race Theory? Thu 28 July 2022

Wicked and dangerous fraud Sat 16 July 2022

Swift downfall Sat 09 July 2022

The Julia language has stalled Sat 09 July 2022

Who do the work Fri 08 July 2022

Because it hurts Fri 08 July 2022

Fumbling the future Fri 08 July 2022

Not convinced Fri 08 July 2022

Parkinson’s law Tue 10 May 2022

2021

Define Professional Sat 11 September 2021

Malice cured by stupidity Wed 08 September 2021

Bad writing and sloppy thought Sat 07 August 2021

Language hygiene initiative Thu 15 July 2021

How is Julia doing? June 2021 Fri 11 June 2021

On too-simple solutions Thu 04 March 2021

Righteous, disobedient, stubborn and firm Wed 03 March 2021

Die Frau mit dem Fagott Sat 06 February 2021

The eternal return Sun 31 January 2021

Legally Christian Sun 17 January 2021

Quantum realm Mon 11 January 2021

2020

Spiritual damage Thu 19 November 2020

Desire to punish Fri 30 October 2020

Gothic mask Fri 30 October 2020

Not professional Sat 08 August 2020

Nothing is easy but failure Wed 29 July 2020

Why not do it ourselves? Sun 26 July 2020

Visual Studio Code dines out at expense of other editors Sun 26 July 2020

Data no defense Thu 23 July 2020

World divided Tue 21 July 2020

Change programming Sat 18 July 2020

Mosteller and data science Tue 14 July 2020

Mosteller’s classroom hint Tue 14 July 2020

COVID and cronies Mon 06 July 2020

Universities and truth Mon 06 July 2020

Drearification Thu 18 June 2020

Code is for people Sun 07 June 2020

Immediate dangers from credulity about artificial intelligence. Sun 07 June 2020

US Police protect themselves from their own interrogation methods Sun 07 June 2020

Lecturers (used to) value teaching Fri 13 March 2020

Lecturers are nearly all above average Fri 13 March 2020

Popularity of Python and Matlab Wed 26 February 2020

How is Julia doing? February 2020 Fri 07 February 2020

Data science tools over time Wed 05 February 2020

Against data Tue 04 February 2020

Despair of Twitter Sat 04 January 2020

2019

Python for teaching computer science Fri 06 December 2019

Chapter 3 of the Raspberry Pi book Fri 29 November 2019

Chomsky on class war Sun 17 November 2019

Big stuff in Ukraine Sat 16 November 2019

The great university con Wed 11 September 2019

Thinking is the hardest work Thu 05 September 2019

Maths and a hard chair Wed 04 September 2019

The fall and rise of exploratory data analysis Mon 02 September 2019

Josephus on a political error by the high priest Sun 18 August 2019

Computer scientists differ little from the rest of us in “best practice” for software development Wed 10 July 2019

The Plain Person’s Guide to Plain Text Social Science Mon 08 July 2019

You can’t do data science in a GUI Mon 08 July 2019

Arrogance and inexperience Mon 01 July 2019

Blueprint for a modern university Thu 20 June 2019

Python is the primary language for data scientists Fri 07 June 2019

Where is data science on the hype cycle? Thu 30 May 2019

How do the foundations get built? Thu 16 May 2019

Who is building the foundations? Tue 14 May 2019

Learning and Twitter Wed 17 April 2019

Worse is better Mon 15 April 2019

How is Julia doing? Thu 11 April 2019

Python, and R, 2019 Wed 10 April 2019

What do you get if you don’t teach stats properly? Fri 05 April 2019

Python, Matlab, R and Julia Fri 05 April 2019

Brexit and modern art Wed 03 April 2019

Recalibrating expectations of acceptable decorum Mon 01 April 2019

Awful indignation Sun 10 February 2019

Lambda calculus, a vignette Sat 09 February 2019

I don’t want to get too meta here, but, I just got an email about the phased shutdown and deletion of Google+ content Fri 01 February 2019

2018

Who knew Wed 19 December 2018

The Joys of the Craft Fri 12 October 2018

The NHS sues a small volunteer organization making a Linux distribution for use by the NHS Fri 31 August 2018

The language hygiene initiative Fri 17 August 2018

He’s still alive Sat 21 July 2018

What is Data Science Mon 16 July 2018

I call bullshit on this email description of changes in Paypal’s legal policy Tue 26 June 2018

I’ve been reflecting from time to time on the mystery of Hadley Wickham’s “Readings in Applied Data Science” at Stanford Tue 05 June 2018

James Shaw Jr. on why he wrestled an assault rifle out of the hands of a man killing indiscriminately in a Tennessee waffle house Mon 23 April 2018

The dirty little secret of the ongoing “data science” boom is that most of what people talk about as being data science isn’t what businesses actually need. Sat 07 April 2018

The Dunning-Kruger effect Thu 05 April 2018

We know now that we get it wrong an awful lot of the time Thu 22 March 2018

Video from Uber car in autonomous mode, that hit and killed a cyclist on a highway Thu 22 March 2018

Alex Lovell’s girlfriend suspected he was cheating, so she waited until he was asleep and attacked him with a Samurai sword. Fri 16 March 2018

The StackOverflow developer survey has a section called most loved / dreaded / wanted languages, where “wanted” means a language that you want to learn Fri 16 March 2018

Science by volume … that has to stop. Mon 26 February 2018

Learning outcomes encapsulate a trivial view of University education Sun 25 February 2018

Python has become the most popular language for teaching introductory courses in computer science Fri 23 February 2018

Data scientist wanted: Must have Python, spontaneity not required Mon 19 February 2018

Working more than 40 hours a week causes an overall drop in productivity and increase in errors Mon 29 January 2018

Noam Chomsky on the purpose of education Tue 16 January 2018

Just a humble question Sat 13 January 2018

Some evidence that employers want data and coding skills Sat 13 January 2018

Why I’m Learning Python in 2018 Sat 13 January 2018

2017

I had not thought that I would read this opinion on Pinochet, but here it is Sat 30 December 2017

Do not love the system Sat 30 December 2017

The growth of Julia seems to be pretty slow Sat 09 December 2017

Python overtook R in a poll of languages used for data analytics Sat 09 December 2017

In his famous essay “On Bullshit”, Harry G. Frankfurt argues that a bullshitter is someone who does not care about the difference between true or false, but will use whatever comes to hand in order to persuade. Fri 10 November 2017

I wrote up the argument for switching to Python from Matlab Thu 09 November 2017

Comparing Python and Matlab for teaching in science Wed 08 November 2017

The seeker after truth Mon 30 October 2017

A study comparing standard teaching with Arts Integrated (AI) teaching of science subjects Wed 25 October 2017

The derisive local nickname for Amazon employees is “Amholes” — pugnacious and work-obsessed Sat 21 October 2017

I am trying to work out how to teach statistics to undergraduates in life-science disciplines such as Biology and Psychology. Wed 04 October 2017

I am reading a 2006 paper by Kirschner, Sweller and Clark on “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work Mon 02 October 2017

Douglas Crockford got uninvited from a conference, apparently because he as a reputation for being rather rude about things he doesn’t like Mon 25 September 2017

Analysis of StackOverflow views shows that interest in Python is growing fast, and at an increasing rate. Fri 08 September 2017

Data Engineering Mon 04 September 2017

How to deal with an armed kidnapper, 1974 UK style Sun 03 September 2017

I had previously noticed that most people that do teaching believe that they are pretty good, including people I would have rated as bad teachers. Wed 30 August 2017

Training data scientists is hard work Wed 30 August 2017

Eminent teachers of statistics discussing the future of statistics education Mon 28 August 2017

I just read the now famous Google memo, that got the author fired. Thu 10 August 2017

I just watched “An American Radical” about Normal Finkelstein Sat 29 July 2017

What does real data analysis look like? Thu 20 July 2017

Excellent 10 minute argument about the horrors of standard statistical theory compared to the joys of resampling methods. Thu 20 July 2017

Gender reveal parties Sun 09 July 2017

UK science has declined compared to the US in terms of Nobel prizes, but is catching up in terms of number of papers and citations. Thu 06 July 2017

Is the UK research excellence framework doing more harm than good Thu 06 July 2017

Student ratings of satisfaction have very little relationship to their performance in the final exam Wed 05 July 2017

Hadley Wickham on “big data” Sat 01 July 2017

Smetative Sat 03 June 2017

Wasting money on mapping the brain Sat 27 May 2017

Shotguns to toddlers Wed 24 May 2017

Bundle it up and send it off Wed 24 May 2017

Big data and (not) knowledge Thu 18 May 2017

A panel discussion on the nature of data science Wed 17 May 2017

Academic statistics may have lost its way Wed 17 May 2017

Industry as the origin of “data science” Wed 17 May 2017

Tukey (1965) on the importance of computing in the education of statisticians Wed 17 May 2017

In 1965, Tukey predicted the rise of computer science at the expense of statistics Wed 17 May 2017

“Computing with data” in 1998 Wed 17 May 2017

To be a mature data analyst, you must also be a programmer Wed 17 May 2017

Hatred in America Wed 17 May 2017

A rather depressing snapshot of the visitors to St Peter’s in Rome Fri 28 April 2017

I have a memory, that is probably false, of a 1980s Private Eye cover, with a picture of Cecil Parkinson, a reviled Thatcherite. Sun 23 April 2017

I have found it very hard to work out the meaning behind the term “data science”, but I think I have solved it now Sat 11 March 2017

Looking out a link for the Anaconda Python distribution, I found the main web page at Mon 27 February 2017

I got sick, so took to following Wikipedia trails, which brought me to Thu 23 February 2017

A love-song to Cuba, with beautiful and evocative images of Havana (that I know) and the Cuban countryside (that I don’t know Sat 11 February 2017

In the 1820s, the Society for Progressive Education in New York introduced a system of redeemable tokens as rewards for correct school work and a system of fines for various offenses in the school. Wed 25 January 2017

Inauguration day Fri 20 January 2017

Here I have made a small change to another quote from Marcus Aurelius Fri 13 January 2017

This is more of the story of cell culture contamination and striking indifference in the scientific community. Fri 13 January 2017

Terry Speed remembering George E. P. Box, and the huge advances in statistics that resulted from work during the second World War Thu 12 January 2017

Let them eat Gauss Sat 07 January 2017

2016

Teaching easy, teaching simple Fri 09 December 2016

Kent Beck is interesting on the change in culture from the old days, where programmers wrote code and the quality assessment people tested it, to the current practice, where the programmer takes responsibility for the quality of their own code Sat 03 December 2016

How much do scientists care whether their results are correct Fri 25 November 2016

I hope you will enjoy the irony as I quote this fragment from Plato, Letter 7 Sun 18 September 2016

There’s an interesting discussion going on at the Research Software Engineers mailing list Tue 13 September 2016

On getting basics right Mon 29 August 2016

Data Scientist (n.) Wed 24 August 2016

Who is reading? Mon 22 August 2016

Blog post on sheltering students from install problems Fri 19 August 2016

How should we teach students to use computers? Fri 19 August 2016

I get regular fund-raising emails from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Fri 22 July 2016

In the years between 1974 and 2014, the frequency of the words “innovative,” ”groundbreaking,” and “novel” in PubMed abstracts increased by 2500% or more (Vinkers, Tijdink & Otte, 2015)” From Mon 06 June 2016

TODD talks Mon 30 May 2016

At the theory lunch, we do not believe in using slides, waiting until the end to ask questions, or stopping the speaker when he or she runs out of time Wed 04 May 2016

UC Berkeley student questioned, refused service after speaking Arabic on flight | The Daily Californian Fri 15 April 2016

I found that I didn’t understand the Fourier transform very well, and I’m weak on my complex number algebra, so I wrote a tutorial explaining the Fourier transform using cos and sin rather than the traditional e^ix notation Wed 13 April 2016

In “Guess who’s coming to dinner” (1967), Joey Drayton, a young white woman, wants to marry John Prentice, a black man. Sun 03 April 2016

A flash-bulb illumination of a moment in history Sun 03 April 2016

Which programming language should we use for scientific computing Sun 27 March 2016

An occasional cure for injelititis Mon 21 March 2016

Every error is a jewel that can be used to uncover weaknesses in systems and individuals, which in turn can be improved Mon 07 March 2016

One evening [Thomas Carlyle and Alfred Tennyson] met in [Carlyle’s] house, and smoked continuously for three hours, neither of them saying a word, opening their mouths only to emit floods of smoke, and when Tennyson rose to depart, he said “This has been a blessed evening, Thomas”, and Thomas replied “Alfred, I have never enjoyed your company more than tonight Thu 11 February 2016

Sea-Lioning is an Internet slang term referring to intrusive attempts at engaging an unwilling debate opponent by feigning civility and incessantly requesting evidence to back up their claims Sun 07 February 2016

An interesting before and after picture Sun 07 February 2016

Nine Reasons Women Don’t Edit Wikipedia (in their own words) Wed 27 January 2016

Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power, and within the women’s movement is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). Tue 26 January 2016

Stefan van der Walt pointed me to this Fri 22 January 2016

Researchers are surprisingly likely to admit to questionable research practices Fri 15 January 2016

I wrote a blog post about “makes-sense epistemology Fri 15 January 2016

Why do researchers write sloppy code? Fri 15 January 2016

Makes-sense epistemology Fri 15 January 2016

The American Academy of Sciences wrote this paragraph in 1989 Sun 10 January 2016

Here we see a 1969 memo from the deputy director of the FBI Cartha De Loach Sat 09 January 2016

Stanford’s Jordan Hall is named after the first president of Stanford, David Starr Jordan, and home to the Department of Psychology Sat 09 January 2016

But - it is only Python and R, measures code contribution by number of commits, and doesn’t (can’t) analyze journals for which text is not freely available Tue 05 January 2016

2015

I read this quote from a book written by a friend of mine Wed 23 September 2015

I believe these lines from the pope’s homily show a deep understanding of the way Cubans think of themselves Sun 20 September 2015

Jon Stewart on bullshit Mon 07 September 2015

A UK report on research culture found that Fri 21 August 2015

Excellent and relevant quote from Confucius in a comment on a nature news article Fri 21 August 2015

Nancy Kanwisher on how to evaluate FMRI studies Thu 13 August 2015

Bibliometrics: The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics Thu 06 August 2015

Sourceforge went down heavily and is only slowly coming back up. Tue 21 July 2015

The BBC bowed to pressure from the government to suppress a film about nuclear war and claimed they did this because the film was a failure. Fri 03 July 2015

Are preclinical drug studies becoming less replicable at a rapid rate Thu 02 July 2015

Here is a picture of the strangely informal world of the British Government during the war Wed 01 July 2015

The tools we use have a profound (and devious!) Mon 22 June 2015

APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. Mon 22 June 2015

The work on satisfactory formulation of technical patents was a true blessing for me. Wed 10 June 2015

I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. Wed 10 June 2015

Results for standard neuroimaging analysis pipelines differ somewhat when run on two very similar Redhat-based Intel Linux clusters. Mon 08 June 2015

Authors should submit their proposed study for peer review. Thu 04 June 2015

Please sign this Tue 21 April 2015

I was reading about Joe Strummer (Clash singer / guitarist), and found this vivid echo from Britain in the 1980s Sat 28 March 2015

Fred Brooks on “The Joys of the Craft” in the book “The Mythical man-month Tue 24 March 2015

Suggestive evidence that women in technical jobs are more likely than men to get negative personal criticism in performance reviews, regardless of the gender of the reviewer Mon 23 March 2015

Software engineering had emerged as a compelling solution to the software crisis in part because it was flexible enough to appeal to a wide variety of computing practitioners. Fri 13 March 2015

I just watched this episode of Buffy the Vampire slayer Sat 07 February 2015

Thomas Caswell just mentioned this article in a post to the matplotlib mailing list Wed 04 February 2015

My impression is that most scientists feel that they don’t make very many errors in reporting their results. Fri 30 January 2015

One reason that people don’t want to share data is that other people might find mistakes or bias in the analysis Fri 30 January 2015

Psychiatry / psychology papers support the tested hypothesis 90% of the time. Fri 30 January 2015

Living in the danger zone Fri 30 January 2015

Dijkstra was not impressed by Ada Fri 30 January 2015

The last sentence of Edsger Dijkstra’s report on the “green” proposal for what would later become the Ada programming language Fri 23 January 2015

Max Weber on “Science as a vocation Fri 23 January 2015

The enjoyment of one’s tools is an essential ingredient of successful work Wed 21 January 2015

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. Wed 21 January 2015

The BBC has a page on the outbreak of Christmas goodwill between the allied and German trenches in 1914 Tue 20 January 2015

US department of defense on open- vs closed- source software Mon 19 January 2015

Chomsky - you can only be “concise” if you saying something everyone believes already Thu 08 January 2015

2014

Paul Ivanov mentioned this talk in his Scipy presentation Sat 18 October 2014

The founder that Julie Ann Horvath refers to in her interview was Tom Preston-Werner. Fri 04 July 2014

Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism And Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit | TechCrunch Fri 04 July 2014

This is a self-conscious rant about the Perl programming language Tue 24 June 2014

This blog post argues that BSD licenses make it more likely that projects will lose developers when they get hired by companies Sun 08 June 2014

Frederick Herzberg points out that satisfaction at work is not the opposite of dissatisfaction. Fri 16 May 2014

Egypt wants to execute how many people? Tue 29 April 2014

Elsevier journals – some facts Thu 24 April 2014

A poem by Ivor Cutler, in “Is that your flap, Jack Fri 21 March 2014

Mac binaries find their libraries at run-time Thu 27 February 2014

For the quote at the top from Steve Gilhooey Mon 17 February 2014

2013

I spent a while trying to understand the detail of “Why most published research findings are false” by John PA Ioannidis Fri 08 November 2013

A confused crowd shouting at Sinead O’Connor or each other, and then she sings, bravely Sat 05 October 2013

A science journalist sent 304 random variations of a deliberately and severely flawed paper to open access journals Fri 04 October 2013

we urge future researchers to exercise caution in the use of advanced mathematical tools, such as nonlinear dynamics, and in particular to verify that the elementary conditions for their valid application have been met Fri 04 October 2013

Summary of a study of code review techniques Fri 27 September 2013

Quoting from page 32 of Eichmann in Jerusalem, by Hannah Arendt Sat 31 August 2013

Another danger is that commercial pressures of one sort or another will divert the attention of the best thinkers from real innovation to exploitation of the current fad, from prospecting to mining a known lode. Wed 28 August 2013

Since the Romans have taught us “Simplex Veri Sigillum” —that is Wed 28 August 2013

Computer coding for children Mon 12 August 2013

Honest, and later on, wise Sun 11 August 2013

This experience has taught me one very important lesson Fri 09 August 2013

A reflection on the the problems of paying for work on open source projects Wed 26 June 2013

The XFree / X.Org fork and open source governance Tue 25 June 2013

The core melts down Tue 25 June 2013

Thinking of the depressing (lack of, blocking of) discussion about governance on the numpy mailing list, I came across this email explaining why making XFree86 governance more open was a waste of time Mon 24 June 2013

Paying people for work they are doing for the common good can make them angry Sun 02 June 2013

The page tells the sad story of Admiral Sir Dudley North. Sun 02 June 2013

The editors of PLoS responding as editors to the article “Why most published research findings are false Wed 29 May 2013

A hint as to why an older generation of scientists might be more prone to believe that scientific sofware need not be written by scientists Mon 27 May 2013

I gave desperate warnings against the obscurity, the complexity, and over-ambition of the new design, but my warnings went unheeded. Fri 24 May 2013

The mysterious belief that we don’t make many mistakes in scientific computer programs Thu 23 May 2013

Why many scientists think reproducible science is desirable but not necessary Thu 23 May 2013

A characteristic summary of the British idea of being British Thu 23 May 2013

Don’t expect too much in the early days; […]. Thu 09 May 2013

Some more vivid phrasing from the introduction to Wed 01 May 2013

Excellent quote from the end of the introduction to “Javascript, the good parts” (Douglas Crockford, 2008, O’Reilly Tue 30 April 2013

Disapproval of heart Tue 30 April 2013

A bad time Tue 30 April 2013

Disapproval of heart Mon 22 April 2013

A bad time Sun 21 April 2013

Evidence of very low statistical power and high risk of false positive findings in neuroscience Thu 18 April 2013

Matthew Brett hung out with 1 person.Nolan Nichols Thu 11 April 2013

Message in banner at top of page confirming I had paid for a book on the SpringerLink website Sat 06 April 2013

How Python installs scripts on Windows and Unix. Fri 01 February 2013

Quoting from Sat 12 January 2013

2012

Fast forward tracking branch to latest remote commit Mon 31 December 2012

TED talks on vulnerability, shame and courage Mon 10 December 2012

my niece is so awesome!!!!! Thu 04 October 2012

Some useful references, including this paper in PLoS Fri 14 September 2012

I need to use Yahoo messenger web app. Tue 21 August 2012

Then the question ; what happens when this breaks down? Fri 29 June 2012

Last year, in a seven-month period there were two explosions inside factories where iPads were being produced that killed four people and injured 77 others. Tue 08 May 2012

This is a continuous functional MRI activation map. Sat 05 May 2012

In this study, the researchers pretended that they needed recommendation to the ethics committee for an experiment that would cause severe emotional distress. Sun 29 April 2012

I wonder whether there is a large difference between people in what they see. Sun 29 April 2012

I realized that I was still confused about floating point error, and I found it hard to understand the explanations I could easily find, so I wrote my own Mon 23 April 2012

I have twice now run into links to articles by Peter Lawrence. Mon 23 April 2012

Do functional MRI papers replicate? Wed 11 April 2012

Forensics on a paper published in Science, but likely to be substantially or entirely wrong Wed 04 April 2012

Blog post with some basic forensics of an open-source software fork Wed 28 March 2012

Then, on the BBC report Wed 14 March 2012

I visited this link Sun 04 March 2012

I wrote a discussion of culture on the numpy mailing list Mon 20 February 2012

The photo that JB sent to Neuroimage, celebrating finishing our somewhat late paper Mon 20 February 2012

2011

I never felt I had quite grasped floating point, so wrote a tutorial to explain it to myself Fri 07 October 2011