Data Analysis with Open Source Tools, Philipp K. Janert
"Big Fad?
The rise of Big Data is a remarkable phenomenon. When this book was conceived (early 2009), Big Data was certainly on the horizon but was not necessarily considered mainstream yet. As this book goes to print (late 2010), it seems that for many people in the tech field, “data” has become nearly synonymous with “Big Data.” That kind of development usually indicates a fad. The reality is that, in practice, many data sets are “small,” and in particular many relevant data sets are small. (Some of the most important data sets in a commercial setting are those maintained by the finance department—and since they are kept in Excel, they must be small.)
Big Data is not necessarily “better.” Applied carelessly, it can be a huge step backward. The amazing insight of classical statistics is that you don’t need to examine every single member of a population to make a definitive statement about the whole: instead you can sample! It is also true that a carefully selected sample may lead to better results than a large, messy data set. Big Data makes it easy to forget the basics"
How Simple Ideas Lead to Scientific Discoveries
Great talk by Adam Savage of MythBusters fame. Key quote: "Whenever I am having trouble understanding a concept, I go back and research the people who discovered that concept. I look at the story of how they came to understand it". This key technique is usually lacking in education. We need to trace the thought patterns of the creators of all discoveries which will teach students to think like them. They might even see where they might have fallen short and continue a line of research if need be. Right now we simply drop bunch of cooked up end results on a student's lap and expect them to "know", and "use" these results, similar to the way we give people finished industrial products for consumers to just "use" and consume.
#FuckSOPA
"If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong
In the early 1990s, a trio of psychologists descended on the Universität der Künste, a historic arts academy in the heart of West Berlin. They came to study the violinists [..] We can start by disproving the assumption that the elite players dedicate more hours to music. The time diaries revealed that both groups spent, on average, the same number of hours on music per week (around 50).The difference was in how they spent this time. The elite players were spending almost three times more hours than the average players on deliberate practice — the uncomfortable, methodical work of stretching your ability [..].
They also studied how the students scheduled their work. The average players, they discovered, spread their work throughout the day. A graph included in the paper, which shows the average time spent working versus the waking hours of the day, is essentially flat.
The elite players, by contrast, consolidated their work into two well-defined periods. When you plot the average time spent working versus the hours of the day for these players, there are two prominent peaks: one in the morning and one in the afternoon [..].
Also consider relaxation. The researchers asked the players to estimate how much time they dedicated each week to leisure activities — an important indicator of their subjective feeling of relaxation. By this metric, the elite players were significantly more relaxed than the average players, and the best of the best were the most relaxed of all [..].
This analysis leads to an important conclusion [..] If you’re chronically stressed and up late working, you’re doing something wrong. You’re the average players from the Universität der Künste — not the elite. You’ve built a life around hard to do work, not hard work"
An Italian IT worker acquintance tells me that he left Italy for Germany. He worked in his home country as a freelancer for a while where he was taxed at 50%. He complains after all that tax burden, what he also sees government services such as health, justice taking a nose dive. And the dysfunction in government services is exploited by others which makes things worse: freelancer and client agree on a price but after the work is finished, the client does not pay, trusting that taking the matter to court will take years to resolve. But the suck does not end there; freelancer is forced to settle for less, while paying taxes on the previously agreed upon price. What kind of bullshit is this? Getting the agreed upon price in freelance work is not unheard of (in fact it happens in US too) but the tax thing is completely idiotic. Acquintance told me he actually saw the number zero in his bank account after his freelance experience.
There is a groving dissatisfaction in Italy, the perception is the current political class (and they are a class) have imploded, and went fubar. The system screws the very people it needs, the people who create value at the same time, making exploiters, the parasites rich.
This is a big problem in developing countries. Many schools use English to teach natural sciences for instance which in the long run hampers the transmission of the subject matter in depth. Yes, one advantage of foreign language based teaching is being able to use English based material immediately in class [1], but this single advantage is erased by other factors that work to a child's disadvantage. Plus, the teaching material issue can be fixed easily; teachers prepare their own lecture material in their own language. Surely not every teacher might be able to do this, but this blog's position is already that only top-notch researchers teaching and their video lectures to be transmitted to millions of children anyway, so we dont really give a f-k about problems of regular teachers, or the dysfunctional system that is based on their presence.
Most of the other perceived "advantages" of this system are plain wrong. FLBT complicates the teaching of subjects and fails to teach the language itself for regular use. A famous Turkish researcher told a story: he comes to Harvard after studying under FLBT system for many years, after he lands, he meets his advisor for the first time who asks him: "How long did your trip take?" to which our guy answers "I am fine thank you". There are many stories like this. FLBT students only learn enough of language to get by, nothing more.
Also, Dr Rigoberta Menchú, Nobel Peace Laureate and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Culture of Peace, writes: “Many people know what it is like to struggle in school. Others know what it is like to be forced to drop out. For many children, this deep frustration and disappointment is not caused by physical or monetary barriers, but by the decision to teach in a language which they do not understand"
"Unesco has stressed the significance of the mother tongue for over 50 years. Save the Children's 2009 report for the CfBT education trust, Language and Education: The Missing Link, hammers home this message [..] The research evidence on mother tongue-based multilingual education is unambiguous. English-medium education in postcolonial contexts that neglects mother tongues and local cultural values is clearly inappropriate and ineffective"
Ass
In hierarchical, military environments which are also heavily dominated by men, there is lots of joking around the word "ass". I guess this is funny because the word is so .. "anti", to that environment. If someone makes a mistake, he'll say "it will be my ass", or someone steps out of line another can tell him "I am gonna have your ass". The word can be used as in ass chewing, ass whopping, or ass kissing. If there are enemy soldiers overwhelming us, I can say "the enemy is crawling up my ass". I remembered this while watching a Stargate Atlantis episode (scifi show), the characters' minds are scanned by some alien race, then they wake up, and someone goes "we were mind probed". The soldier character in the show thinks about that little while, then says "I hope that's the only thing they probed". This stuff makes me laugh to no end.
Changing Education Paradigms
Interesting video, makes some nice points. Some disagreements, there is nothing wrong with enlightement ideals, or its view of the mind, and MBTI type system makes clear not everyone will be interested in theoretical matters. But I am in 100% in aggreement with the other points. Industrial mindset is the enemy. I also truly abhor the way Americans make their children pop pills for simplest ailments.
https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U
China's deadly wake-up call
The recent collision of two high-speed trains in China that left at least 39 people dead is quickly becoming a symbol for many Chinese of all that's wrong with China's government and economy [..] If you want to understand the tensions in the Chinese system of government and development that might put a knot in straight-line growth projections for China's future, spend a minute studying the way this event is rippling across China.
"China the innovator" took a big hit [..] The rejoinder from Japanese and German makers of high-speed trains was that it looked to them as if China hadn't achieved higher speeds by innovating but by cutting corners on safety. That argument looks a lot stronger after the wreck, when so many pundits are comparing the zero passenger-death record in the 47-year history of Japan's high-speed Shinkansen system to the record of China's 4-year-old high-speed rail system.
Economic recovery leaving middle class behind
Chrystia Freeland article
Economics professors Nir Jaimovich of Duke University and Henry Siu of the University of British Columbia take as their starting point one of the most important changes in Western developed societies. That shift is what economists have called the “polarization” of the job market. Maarten Goos and Alan Manning, extending the research to Britain, have more colourfully dubbed it the dual rise of “lousy and lovely” jobs.
Their point is that, thanks to technology, more and more “routine” tasks can be done by machines. The most familiar example is the increasing automation of manufacturing. But machines can now do “routine” white-collar jobs, too – such as work that used to be performed by travel agents and much of the legal “discovery” that was done by relatively well-paid associates with expensive law degrees [..].
Job polarization is happening throughout the Western developed world. It accounts for many of the social and political strains we have experienced over the past three decades, particularly the increasing divide between the people at the top and at the bottom of the economic heap, and the disappearance of those in the middle who were once both the compass and the backbone of our societies.
What’s new about the Jaimovich-Siu work is that they have found that job polarization isn’t a slow, evolutionary process. It happens in short, sharp bursts – economic downturns. The researchers found that in the United States since the mid-1980s, 92 per cent of job loss in middle-skill occupations has happened within 12 months of a recession.
“We think of recessions as temporary, but they lead to these permanent changes,” Prof. Siu told me. “The big puzzle about business cycles is, Why have we had these jobless recoveries over the past three recessions? These jobless recoveries are because you have these middle-skilled jobs that are being wiped off the table.”
German Maker of Robots Gains as Chinese Wages Rise
Kuka, the largest European maker of industrial robots, is creating a regional hub in China to develop sales in a country where rising wages are lifting demand for automated factory gear [..] “China alone bought 15,000 robots last year, and we expect that number to rise to about 20,000 this year,” Mr. Reuter said. The company’s target of an operating margin of 10 percent at the robot unit “is within reach,” after having reached 9 percent in the fourth quarter, he said [..]
Rising wages, a push for quality and demands for faster production are prompting the Chinese manufacturing industry to buy more robots, helping European companies like Kuka and ABB turn lagging businesses into profit centers. Kuka’s robots have become twice as profitable as the company’s larger systems unit; ABB turned its robot unit around in 2010 [..]
“Salary inflation is the driving force behind robot demand in China,” Michel Demare, the ABB chief financial officer, said in February.
Jobs is marked as ISTP by CelebrityTypes.com. Some quotes are shared here. Jobs does not give much credit to thinking, a typical STP trait. He was for utility, and NTs, SJs are utilitarian as well, but it appears he was much more focused on impact, and living in the now the way an Artisan would be. He is adverserial -- in a way an INTJ could be as well.. but his seemingly enjoying it as a sport, whereas an NTJ would have seen it as unneeded annoyance, also can make a case for his ISTP'ness. In addition for an NT, gathering knowledge is almost a life quest, and Jobs apparently had no interest in this regard, at least for pure theoretical / application purposes. He was about the object, about the now, not about the abstract.
The eye-opener is "$499 first-generation iPad included only about $33 of manufacturing labour" -- another indicator of why Chinese model is not sustainable. As avid readers of the Third Wave, the Chinese themselves surely know this, and sooner or later, they too will have to terms with the necessity of transititioning to a more knowledge intensive and service related economy.