written by Eric J. Ma on 2019-03-22 | tags: python hacks tips and tricks data science productivity coding
In praise of functools.partial, and how I used it in a Flask/Bokeh app!
written by Eric J. Ma on 2019-03-20 | tags: data science productivity
My tooling, routines, and techniques for getting things done and learning new things!
Read on... (825 words, approximately 5 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2019-03-01 | tags: data science programming best practices
In this Q&A-style blog post, I detail how data scientists can begin to engage in pair coding as a more common practice in our day-to-day work, and why we should spend the time to do it as much as we can afford.
Read on... (840 words, approximately 5 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2019-01-28 | tags: data science data products minimum viable products
I would like to encourage you to build more "minimum viable products" of your projects. Come learn why they’re so valuable!
Read on... (100 words, approximately 1 minute reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2019-01-21 | tags: scalability bayesian model dose response parameter learning model specification convergence shrinkage large dataset nuts mcmc advi variational inference neural networks random sampling biochemistry data modeling
I've been exploring a Bayesian hierarchical 4-parameter dose response model at work. Initially, I used a few thousand samples for prototyping, but I've now scaled up to 400K+ samples. Fitting the model with NUTS would've taken a week, but ADVI did the job in just 2.5 hours. 🚀 This experience has given me a new appreciation for ADVI, even in simpler models with large datasets. 🧠
Read on... (365 words, approximately 2 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2018-12-25 | tags: data science conda hacks
The conda package manager has, over the years, become an integral part of my workflow. I use it to manage project environments, and have built a bunch of very simple hacks around it that you can adopt too. I'd like to share them with...
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written by Eric J. Ma on 2018-12-16 | tags: data science bayesian
Here are my notes from learning about Gaussian Processes. It's been a long intellectual journey; hope you find my notes useful.
Read on... (283 words, approximately 2 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2018-12-09 | tags: deep learning bayesian math data science
Last week, I picked up Jeremy Kun's book, "A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics". In it, I finally found an explanation for my frustrations when reading math papers:
What programmers would consider... (read more)
(777 words, approximately 4 minutes reading time)
written by Eric J. Ma on 2018-11-13 | tags: data science insight data science
There's a quote by John Tukey that has been a recurrent theme at work.
It's better to solve the right problem approximately than to solve the wrong problem exactly.
Continuing on the theme of quoting two... (read more)
(328 words, approximately 2 minutes reading time)written by Eric J. Ma on 2018-11-12 | tags: python code style
Having used Black for quite a while now, I have a hunch that it will continue to surpass its current popularity amongst projects.
It's one thing to be opinionated about things that matter for a project, but don't matter personally. Like code... (read more)
(181 words, approximately 1 minute reading time)