tom_b

23 ms·

151.
by tom_b 14y ago
I was playing with the Rosalind problems using clojure. It was great fun, although I did evil things with the clojure combinatorics library and in one memorable session, datomic datalog. I need to revisit them, but the thornier (for me) pr
152.
by tom_b 14y ago
Genomics and bioinformatics for one. Identifying specific cancer tumor-specific gene mutations on a per-patient basis is happening today in small batches. This is a direct result of hard-core hacking in sequence alignment software, advance
153.
by tom_b 14y ago
I'm super curious - have you considered getting out of RDBMs totally for this use case? I have personally wondered about graph databases or something different for the backend storage. The problem of storing these deep and dynamic hierarc
154.
by tom_b 14y ago
Are your parent/child relationships relatively static? Nested sets might work well for you if so and are db agnostic. But you'll be clobbered if your tree relationships are volatile and you have to update them in a transactional way. I p
155.
by tom_b 14y ago
The proposed "inner ring/outer ring" admissions solution is interesting. The inner ring of admission slots (say 20%) are filled purely on academic merit metrics (NMS, GPA, SAT score, etc), then 80% of slots are filled based on dumping ever
156.
by tom_b 14y ago
Non-technical people don't query. They call me up, ask me to do a "quick report across the inventory db with the project cost data." I send it off to them. If they like it, we push a report (maybe with a couple of parameters) into product
157.
by tom_b 14y ago
I have found that I really only "remember" those aspects of my job that I currently use on a daily basis for some period of time. Learned material that I don't refresh by use in some relatively short period of time (days? weeks?) drifts a
158.
by tom_b 14y ago
Ugh, as a Linux BI hacker, I hate XLSX. I have to handle data imports from products that produce incorrect XLSX formats, apache POI blows up for the relatively small numbers of rows (<250K or so - I cheat by giving my JVM 16GB of memor
159.
by tom_b 14y ago
No worries, I think you have the right read on the prestige issue. Of course in an academic research center, no one makes any money and prestige is reserved for grant-winners and first authors in Nature. Publications would be hard as a non
160.
by tom_b 14y ago
No. I sit side-by-side with PhDs in bioinformatics and am useful because I can write crazy SQL, can munge data at the cmd line and with ruby/clojure, and simply don't care what format data comes to me in. I have some preferences, but I'll
161.
by tom_b 14y ago
I work on a bioinformatics team in a research environment and have no bio coursework/background. There is a ton of standard IT work here. I do mainly data integration and standard reporting stuff. For example, reports for "where is my s
162.
by tom_b 14y ago
If you say the datalog query aspect of Datomic, I would be tremendously (maybe embarrassingly) happy.
163.
by tom_b 14y ago
I have several concerns about the original article, but if the point of this guest post on Newport's blog is "look, I was able to grind through the MIT requirements in a year with reasonable success" it is not particularly damning that all
164.
by tom_b 14y ago
You might be interested in skimming the following paper: njrp.tamu.edu/2004/PDFs/Collier.pdf This is a entry-level paper investigating dual-language instruction. These researchers are looking at student outcomes and how dual-language instr
165.
by tom_b 14y ago
I would love to hear more about shifting the "offering commodity skills" to "I produce measurable business value" mindset. From Patrick or other HN'ers. My career path has always been very conservative, e.g. "What skills do I need to be em
166.
by tom_b 14y ago
I really think that memorization of the foundations and core of a programming language you expect to need, even infrequently, is the key to levelling up as a hacker. Mind maps and/or spaced repetition techniques should both help tremendousl
167.
by tom_b 14y ago
I do not use J daily but would like to. I know that many finance firms use KDB+ and Q to manage stock tick data - this is where I first saw KDB+ in action, oddly enough I was pulling some non-tick data from a KDB+ system for a data warehous
168.
by tom_b 14y ago
I have never failed to have fun when I hacked anything at all in J (or in Q/KDB+). But I have also never done any hacking in J except in the context of little bits of code for personal amusement. Once interesting observation - despite not r
169.
by tom_b 14y ago
SRS seems to be the right answer for increasing the long term recall of just about anything. For main points of a tech paper, you could probably use the link method to associate a strong image for each of the main points in the technical p
170.
by tom_b 14y ago
Lots of homegrown dbs look like this. They started life as a doc, then a spreadsheet, got sucked into Access, and now are living in SQL Server or Oracle dbs. I have seen this a bunch in research environments where the tech is a "one-off"
171.
by tom_b 14y ago
I do like Anki and am currently using it for a couple of different learning activities. I would suggest you create your own decks with images you find or create yourself rather than downloading existing decks. Memorization is generally imp
172.
by tom_b 14y ago
Learning "deep" statistics, probability, and applied models of the same. My loose plan is to hack at applied stuff with Clojure and J instead of R. R is clearly the right choice for this, with SAS/Stata/SPSS right behind in terms of incre
173.
by tom_b 14y ago
I would be interested in hearing specific recommendations for self-study of statistics from you. I currently have Feller (based on reading www.ams.org/notices/200510/comm-fowler.pdf) but don't have a good "taste" for what would be the best
174.
by tom_b 14y ago
Maybe the competency proof is the secret sauce for a higher-education disrupting change. I wonder if the angle to attack this is already starting to show-up, with things like HackerSchool or the LivingSocial-created Hungry Academy training
175.
by tom_b 14y ago
This is a little informal to me and strongly suggest you write a targeted cover letter for each one you send out using an existing job description or at least targeted role at a specific company. A cover letter I would love to see: "Hi, I w
176.
A Mathematics Autodidact's Aid(ams.org)
2 points by tom_b 14y ago|0 comments
177.
by tom_b 14y ago
but that's not his advice? That is the advice he was given (and then chose to ignore later and then to remind himself to listen to others when they spoke about his own code)
178.
by tom_b 14y ago
Sure. There are teams doing it every day right now, with clinical patients. It's still research, but we are pushing variant calls back into patient's medical record to help make treatment decisions. From a complexity perspective, not near
179.
by tom_b 14y ago
The Ivies are actually selling exclusivity by attendance along with acting a filter for employers: only the absolute top students have any chance of being admitted and physically attending. The quality of education obtained at the Ivies is
180.
by tom_b 14y ago
No one has mentioned yet, but clearly we will be hearing more from Mr. Fogus: https://thestrangeloop.com/sessions/the-reemergence-of-datal... I cannot attend physically this year. Maybe we can figure out how to get a streaming feed someh

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