jofer

56 ms·

541.
by jofer 13y ago
Not in python. if var: ... is better in some situations, but is objectively worse in many others. If you really do want anything that's "falsey" to fall into that conditional, then by all means, use it! Just
542.
by jofer 13y ago
Have a look at statsmodels: http://statsmodels.sourceforge.net/ and for more basic things, scipy.stats: http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/stats.html It's not a one-to-one match,
543.
by jofer 13y ago
I should have clarified that. I mean in geoscience. As far as I know, none of the majors accept undergraduate geoscience interns. At any rate, the point I was trying to make is that the average salaries include quite a few (majority even? I
544.
by jofer 13y ago
For that matter, I've done internships at two of the companies on that list, and currently work for a third. The full-year-equivalent for my intern salary was ~$80k, at both. (Counting housing stipend.) However, at least in my field (g
545.
by jofer 13y ago
The article (or rather the one it references) makes the argument that: > "...almost all of Musk’s companies rely in some form on government subsidies or tax breaks." Wouldn't that also be true of many (if not most) US com
546.
by jofer 13y ago
Just in case folks happen to comment before reading the article: "Categories: Fauxpinions, Satire"
547.
by jofer 13y ago
No, it's chosen because it preserves direction. They use a single Mercator projection centered at the equator. It's a pragmatic choice, but it's certainly not chosen to produce good local maps. It produces bad local maps ev
548.
by jofer 13y ago
It falls over as soon as people stop trusting each other. As soon as you get to the point where you don't know everyone, folks get less trusting. People function very well in "village-sized" groups, in my experience, and the
549.
by jofer 13y ago
It's quite common in rural areas. I grew up in west TN, and the exact same sort of situation exists there. I've lived in Alaska for a bit, and it's ubiquitous there. (e.g. you _never_ lock a cabin, as someone might need to g
550.
by jofer 13y ago
Now that's cool! If anyone knows or can say: What physical principle(s) is the sensor operating on? There doesn't seem to be much information on that (possibly deliberately).
551.
by jofer 13y ago
On a side note, JV is one of the most universally respected scientists I've seen. (JV --> John Valley, for various reasons everyone at Wisconsin calls him "JV".) He's an absolutely huge name in the field, and actuall
552.
by jofer 13y ago
Basically, they took chunks of what they already knew was a very old (~3.6 billion years old) rock, ground them up, separated out the zircon grains, and dated many (100's to 1000's) of individual zircon grains.
553.
by jofer 13y ago
The CNN article doesn't but it's a detrital zircon. It essentially has to be of terrestrial origin. In other words, the zircon grain was found in what was at one point a sedimentary rock (now metamorphosed). It formed in an igneou
554.
by jofer 13y ago
Actually, there's a lot of research on zircons because they're useful for other research. There are cases ("heavy mineral sands") where zircon is used as an ore, but essentially none of the research on zircons has anythi
555.
by jofer 13y ago
We basically already are. I'm not 100% certain on this, but all porcelain/ceramic pieces should be dateable through Potassium-Argon and Argon-Argon methods. You'll never see it used in archeology as it's only useful for
556.
by jofer 13y ago
I'm impressed, that's a surprisingly good pop-sci-style article. The writing is clear, correct, accessible, and a nice summary of the scientific context for the paper in question. The original PNAS article is also clearly linked
557.
by jofer 13y ago
...And all industry jobs are mindless rote work. I'm not arguing that the things you describe never exist in academia, but they're the worst examples of when things go wrong. They're not the norm.
558.
by jofer 13y ago
Well, sure. That's how addresses work in the US. It used to be that geocoding essentially only worked for US-style addressing systems. I think Google has gotten a bit more advanced by basically doing OCR from street view to make a non
559.
by jofer 13y ago
It is quite remarkable how far things have come in a very short time. When I was in undergrad (early 00's - Not that long ago), "geocoding" basically meant "linear referencing". Linear referencing refers to taking a
560.
by jofer 13y ago
And thus the semi-useless title :) I'm quite aware of MatlabCentral, and it's a _very_ active community. Similarly, there are other forums for scipy, etc (mostly mailing lists). Traditionally, this is where the majority of questi
561.
by jofer 13y ago
Very true. Similarly, there probably are a lot more matlab questions on MatlabCentral than on SO. However, stackoverflow is at least easily searchable and widely used. It's certainly not a purely random sample, though. (On a side not
562.
by jofer 13y ago
Yeah, I was being a bit careless by saying that an MS was required. Your comment is certainly more representative of the field as a whole than mine. More and more schools seem to be heading towards PhD only for graduate geoscience programs
563.
by jofer 13y ago
I do all of my scientific computing in python these days. However, I think it's interesting to compare popularity using stackoverflow (which isn't a great metric, as most scientists aren't aware that it exists): Semi-usel
564.
by jofer 13y ago
> You can use NumPy until the cows come home and you will be no more qualified to contribute to its internals than you were when you started. Just for whatever it's worth, as an occasional contributor to numpy who is an absolutely t
565.
by jofer 13y ago
Very true. It's still better than the option of maintaining two separate codebases, i.m.o., though.
566.
by jofer 13y ago
What's horrible about the "polyglot" approach? Beyond not getting to take full advantage of python3, it's really a relatively painless solution (though when you hit the pain points (bytes vs strings vs unicode) you&#x27
567.
by jofer 13y ago
Have a look at DataNitro for a similar idea with python as the backend: https://datanitro.com/ I've never used it, but it looks quite nifty. It would certainly be interesting to see something similar for R.
568.
by jofer 13y ago
If you just want to install pandoc so you can convert things, see: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/installing.html (There's an OSX binary there) Seeing as how you already have a functioning install of ipython an
569.
by jofer 13y ago
In a lot of fields a M.S. is a requirement to start a PhD. It has nothing whatsoever to do with coursework. Instead, it's a matter of research experience. (Also, at least in my field, you usually do your B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. at three
570.
by jofer 13y ago
By "this json file", do you mean the ipython notebook itself? (It's saved as JSON behind-the-scenes. That's what you'll get if you click "download notebook".) If so, yes, that's what a saved ipython n

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