As a data scientist, you will likely be asked one day to automate your analysis and port your models to production environments. When that happens you cross the blurry line between data science and software engineering, and become a machine learning engineer. I’d like to share a few tips we’re exploring at Expedia on how […]
You need to declare generic functions in S4 before you can define methods for them. If no definition exists you will see the following error: Generic functions are declared with the setGeneric() function, which must precede the call to setMethod(): But when you develop an R package you may have several classes that define their […]
Connecting to an SQL Server instance as a Windows domain user is relatively straightforward when you run R on Windows, you have the right ODBC driver installed, and your network is setup properly. You normally don’t need to supply credentials, because the ODBC driver uses the built-in Windows authentication scheme. Assuming your odbcinst.ini file includes […]
This piece is a writing assignment for the Learning How To Learn online class, in which we are asked to reflect on a recent learning challenge. Shorthand—the ability to write at possibly over 200 words per minute—is a dying skill. The ubiquitous use of computers and laptops for taking notes and meeting minutes has turned […]
“Learning How To Learn” (LHTL), an online course freely available on Coursera, teaches techniques for becoming a better learner and thinker. Given by Dr Barbara Oakley (McMaster University) and Dr Terrence Sejnowski (University of California San Diego), the course covers the latest on how the brain works and suggests practices to make the best it. […]
When I joined Neurobat in 2010, the company’s vision was to develop an add-on component that would compute optimal setpoints for your heating system. Such a device had to be small, cheap, and run reasonably fast. That ruled out modern embedded PCs that nowadays can comfortably run Python; the entire application, including the “smart” model-predictive […]