Blog

The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Marathon

A Data-Driven Guide to the City’s Most Spectacular Streets

Using data from the Vancouver Open Data Portal, some vibes, and lots of checking We have the Vancouver Cherry Blossom (Ultra?) Marathon!

Using OBS for Online Teaching

Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) is a featured and popular used to lay out your screen for recording and streaming. V26 of OBS Studio was released mid October 2020, and it…

Upgrading Marlin 2.0+ with Mesh Bed Levling CR-10s

Video guide from “The First Layer”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rOZpOiWYxM

Python Environments with Conda

Anaconda (and these days miniconda) has been my go-to for getting Python and the scientific/data science software stack installed on my computer (even on my Arch linux…

R Hex Bowtie

If you were at rstudio::conf you may have seen me walking around with my conference badge and wondered what everything is.

My time as an RStudio Intern

When internships are more than technical training

I’ve had a lot of time to think about my time as an RStudio intern. When I do, I usually end up with a few words in my head before I’m flooded with (good) emotions and…

Table of Model Results using kable and kableExtra

I’m at the R/Medicine conference (no it’s not a Reddit thing) and got to help Alison Hill with her R Markdown for Medicine workshop. One of the questions I got to tinker…

R or Python, which One to Learn (First)?

Pick one, learn it well, skills will transfer over

I’ve been asked a few times lately about whether one should learn R or Python.

Git Squash and Merge Workflow

Doing gitmastics as an RStudio intern

I have a love-hate relationship with Git. It took me years of following cookbooks and following strict set of commands to get a sense of how it works. I still have to spend…

Inconsistencies with the `==` operator in R

I found a bug with the == operator in R!

One of the cool things about working on gradethis (grader need to be renamed) is that we end up doing things that aren’t common in R (i.e., grading and comparing code).

Mounting Oclus Rift Sensors on the Wall

Still looking for a way to hide my cables behind the desk…

I was initially going to get some small bookshelves to put my Oculus sensors on, but you can take your Oculus sensors off the stand! This way you wont have an awkward way to…

New Website a la Blogdown!

At least I accomplished something this internship! xD

I finally got everything moved over to blogdown with the Hugo Academic theme. Thanks so much to Allison Hill, who ran the summer-of-blogdown tutorial for us RStudio interns.

RStudio internship week 2

I think I can make it through the summer

The main topics and events of last week were:

And we’re off! RStudio internship week 1, complete.

First week of internship is over and I can’t believe this is actually happening

I’m still pinching myself about being one of the RStudio interns this year. It’s an unbelievable opportunity and I’ve been half panicked and fighting imposter syndrome since…

rstatsnyc as told by @brookLYNevery1, @dataandme, and autographs

An ongoing set up updates about what happened at the 2018 NYC R Conference

EDIT: I’ve added the notes from @dataandme and linked to people’s twitter and slides (if I found them). This is probably going to be an ongoing process…

Analysis-Based Project Templates

One of the most annoying things you hear people say when they are working with some common code base is “It works on my machine…”. Conversely, one of the more satisfying…

From VMs to LXC Containers to Docker Containers

Since I’ve joined SDAL, the lab has undergone a few infrastructure related changes, mainly how applications are run on the servers. From what I remember, we started using Vir…

Project Templates

Project templates provide some standardized way to organize files. Our lab uses a template that is based off the Noble 2009 Paper, “A Quick Guide to Organizing Computational…

Changes in Higher Education

As a PhD student who already has a Master’s degree, it’s safe to say that I’ve been in school for a long time. One of the things in higher education that I started to…

NYC R Conference

Just got back from the 3rd annual NYC R Conference this past weekend. I have been honored to be one of the few speakers for the 3rd year in a row. This year’s talk, “So You…

Preparing for the Summer

As the semester comes to an end, preparing for my lab’s Data Science for the Public Good Program begins. I’ve started a GitHub group to dump the various components we will…

Working While Pursuing a PhD

My lab has extended me an opportunity to be a research scientist and helping out our current senior data scientist with the daily analytics and IT support the lab needs.…

Education in the United States

As people start sharing their educational experiences from around the world, I realized how lucky I am to have been educated in New York City, and how much less the United…

Open Access

“Open” has played in important role in my life the last few years. It all began when I was an attendee at a Software-Carpentry workshop back in 2013. Before then, I only…

The People that Keep Me Sane

Coming from CUNY Hunter College, I never really had the typical ‘college experience’. Going to college for me was almost no different than going to high school since so many…

Tech & Innovation in Higher Ed

How faculty (higher education) are using and/or reacting to social media, MOOCs, and/or other “disruptive” technologies.

A ‘Simple’ Neural-Network Model

My previous blog post summarized the main points of the Watts 2002 paper. At the very end of the post I mentioned ways we can extend the Watts model with neural-networks.…

Should You Attend Grad School?

I’ve been asked a few times about whether one should attend graduate school. I usually follow up by asking whether they are planning to do a Master’s or a Doctorate.

Scientific Programming

Software-Carpentry played an integral part of who I am today. I am always trying to learn and follow best practices in the context of scientific programming, which I think…

From NYC to Blacksburg, VA

I’m from New York City. Born and raised in Queens, and went to school in Manhattan for high school, college, and masters. So, coming down to rural Blacksburg, VA has been a…

My Story

How did I get to where I am today.

What You Call Yourself is Important

I am a PhD Student, not a candidate… yet.

Research Ethics

The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) oversees and directs Public Health Service (PHS) research integrity activities on behalf of the Secretary of Health and Human Services…

Some Modest Advice for Graduate Students

Some Modest Advice for Graduate Students by Stephen C. Stearns

How Learning Works

Susan Ambrose’s book “How Learning Works” is probably one of the best investments for people who teach. The next best (time) investment is reading Greg Wilson’s paper on “Sof…

Teaching and Mentoring

Software-Carpentry1 has made be a better teacher because of the way we collect feedback during our workshops. When teaching a technical class, we use low-tech sticky notes…

Where Do I Fit in Academia?

It’s always a good idea to take a break and think about all that’s going on in life in perspective. As I approach the end of the coursework phase of my PhD program, I need…

Communicating Science

The communication science workshop at class reminds me of the various acting warm-up exercise I did when I took an acting class in high school. The drills require…

Accessible Education in the United States

In the United States, higher education aims to be accessible to everyone. Although historically, college and university degrees were mainly for privileged, white males…

Impostor Syndrome: Am I Qualified?

Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome) is a concept describing high-achieving individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize…

Journal: Why am I Journaling?

I’m taking “Preparing the Future Professoriate” this semester at Virginia Tech, which is one of the core classes for the “Future Professoriate Certificate”.

Mission Statements

Mission statements and reflections on higher education institutions (plus one high school) that I’ve attended.

SWC: What the Carpentries Mean To Me

https://software-carpentry.org/blog/2016/10/what_swc_means_to_me.html

Expanding the Watts Model

I wrote a blog post and gave a seminar talk about the Watts 2002 paper. The next step is thinking about expanding the binary decisions with externalities model to a psycholog…

A Simple Model of Global Cascades on Random Networks

Duncan J Watts wrote a paper that was published in 2002 titled “A simple model of global cascades on random networks” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…

Scientific ‘Purity’ in the ‘Connected Age’

I just started reading Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age by Duncan J. Watts. It’s a book on network theory and related to the Multi-Agent Neural Network project…

SWC: Software Carpentry as a University Course

https://software-carpentry.org/blog/2016/02/swc-as-a-university-course.html

SWC: Teaching Bimodal Workshops with a Large Range

https://software-carpentry.org/blog/2015/11/teaching-extreme-ranges.html

SWC: Assessing Our Learners Part I

https://software-carpentry.org/blog/2015/06/learner-assessment-part-01.html

Getting Started with Data Science and Analysis

I’ve been an instructor for Software-Carpentry (SWC) over a year now. It’s been a facinating experience and I’m proud to be a part of an open source movement promoting best…

SWC: Cookie Cutter

https://software-carpentry.org/blog/2015/02/cookie-cutter.html

Open Source A Python Project I

I started my first open source project towards the end of summer 2014 I began working at the Social Decision Analytics Laboratory at the Virginia Informatics Institutee. The…

SWC: Revamping the Instructor Survey

https://software-carpentry.org/blog/2014/11/revised-instructor-survey.html

Hacking Your MetroCard to $0.00

Earlier this month, Ben Wellington wrote a blog post about How Memorizing “$19.05” Can Help You Outsmart the MTA. A few days later, after the post went viral, the MTA respond…

Welcome to Jekyll!

You’ll find this post in your _posts directory. Go ahead and edit it and re-build the site to see your changes. You can rebuild the site in many different ways, but the most…

SWC: Our First High School Workshop at Rockefeller University

https://software-carpentry.org/blog/2014/07/high-school-students-at-rockefeller.html

Absolute and Relative Directories in Python

One of the most common tasks (for me at least) is saving or getting data from another directory from where the current python script is running. However, for many of the…

Installing Eclipse in Ubuntu 13.10

Adapted answer from Shubhmay and TimD on askubuntu on installing Eclipse.

Setting Up Repast Simphony 2.1 in Linux

Repast Simphony is a Java based collection of agent-based modeling and simulation software.

Setting up a WebDAV Client for Courseworks

Columbia University’s Courseworks website allows you to download files for a registered class. A problem arises when multiple files needed to be downloaded simultaneously.…

Setting up VirtualBox

Edit: March 31, 2014: As an assignment for Software Carpentry I made a screencast to follow along with these steps, here