fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Dunder Data Challenge #5 — Keeping Values Within the Interquartile Range
By: Ted Petrou
Tags: Dunder Data Challenges, Pandas, Data Science, Python

In this challenge, you are given a table of closing stock prices for 10 different stocks with data going back as far as 1999. For each stock, calculate the interquartile range (IQR). Return a DataFrame that satisfies the following conditions:

Keep values as they are if they are within the IQR

For values lower than the first quartile, make them equal equal to the exact value of the first quartile

For values higher than the third quartile, make them equal equal to the exact value of the third quartile

Start this challenge in a Jupyter Notebook right now thanks to Binder (mybinder.org)

Data

import pandas as pd

stocks = pd.read_csv('../data/stocks10.csv', index_col='date',

parse_dates=['date'])

stocks.head()

Challenge

There is a straightforward solution that completes this challenge in a single line of readable code. Can you find it?

Master Python, Data Science and Machine Learning

Immerse yourself in my comprehensive path for mastering data science and machine learning with Python. Purchase the All Access Pass to get lifetime access to all current and future courses. Some of the courses it contains:

Exercise Python — A comprehensive introduction to Python (200+ pages, 100+ exercises)

— A comprehensive introduction to Python (200+ pages, 100+ exercises) Master Data Analysis with Python — The most comprehensive course available to learn pandas. (800+ pages and 350+ exercises)

— The most comprehensive course available to learn pandas. (800+ pages and 350+ exercises) Master Machine Learning with Python — A deep dive into doing machine learning with scikit-learn constantly updated to showcase the latest and greatest tools. (300+ pages)

Get the All Access Pass now!
Three Different Things: November 28, 2018
By: Sean O'Brien
Tags: Marketing, Data Visualization, Digital Transformation, Advertising, Public Relations

Early Hours

For things just getting started.
Video Resource Dives into 3D World with Three.js
By: Mitsuya Watanabe
Tags: JavaScript, Interaction Design, 3d, UI, Threejs

Video Resource Dives into 3D World with Three.js

Video texture can manipulate as 3D blocks by mouse

Background

The example I made a choice from Three.js repository is a video material. Using the material, We can import the video image into a 3D world. In this article, I will explain how I customize the example to my own idea. The key logic is a UV map for a geometry. Therefore, It may be informative at this example as well.

a uv mapping example

Work Flow

* Create a scene, light, camera

* Create material

- Get video resource from video tag

- assign video resource with material

* Create geometries in grid shape

- change uv map

* Bind mouse over event to break video resolusions aroud its position

* Watch intersected object according to mouse

Highlight Code

As I told in the top of the passage, the core code in my demonstration is to create a UV map in a geometry. But before going into the creation, take a look at how the video resource convert into video material. It is simply using THREE.VideoTexture .

video = document.getElementById('video');

texture = new THREE.VideoTexture(video);

In my test, I placed BoxGeometry in a grid in order to set the video resource on it. The code to put box objects in a grid is as follows.

var xgrid = 20, ygrid = 10;

var xsize = 480 / xgrid, ysize = 204 / ygrid; var groupMesh = new THREE.Object3D(); for (i = 0; i < xgrid; i++) {

for (j = 0; j < ygrid; j++) {

geometry = new THREE.BoxBufferGeometry(xsize, ysize, xsize, 5, 5, 5);

material = new THREE.MeshLambertMaterial(parameters);

mesh = new THREE.Mesh(geometry, material); // NOTE: Place mesh in a grid

mesh.position.x = (i - xgrid / 2) * xsize;

mesh.position.y = (j - ygrid / 2) * ysize;

mesh.position.z = 0; mesh.scale.x = mesh.scale.y = mesh.scale.z = 1;

groupMesh.add(mesh); }

}

In this nested for loop, I create a box objects in each loop, then recreate a UV map of the geometry.

// NOT: normlized value for a grid.

var ux = 1 / xgrid;

var uy = 1 / ygrid; for (var i = 0; i < xgrid; i++) {

for (var j = 0; j < ygrid; j++) {

change_uvs(geometry, ux, uy, i, j);

}

} function change_uvs(geometry, unitx, unity, offsetx, offsety) {

var uvs = geometry.attributes.uv.array; for (var i = 0; i < uvs.length; i += 2) {

uvs[i] = (uvs[i] + offsetx) * unitx;

uvs[i + 1] = (uvs[i + 1] + offsety) * unity;

}

}

What the uvs value in change_uvs function is how many faces in the geometry. Let’s take a BoxGeometry for example. If you define the default BoxGeometory, you can see it something like the following left image object. This basic geometry returns 48 value in return by geometry.attributes.uv.array . This value indicates 48 positions are including as a UV map. Why the calculation at 48 is:
Check out the Lord of the Rings movie trailer when you have an hour to kill while downloading it.
By: Ben Edwards
Tags: Movies, Lord Of The Rings, The Web, Lotr, Browsers

Here’s another rant:

When you are at a play, musical, opera, wherever you may see a live event, don’t give a standing ovation unless it was really, really good. You should have been moved to tears, or laughing hysterically the whole time for a show to receive this honor.

I am sick of people giving “courtesy ovations” when a show is simply done well. Maybe the people who do this only go to the theater once a year and really think the performance was that good. Maybe the friends of the folks in the play want to be nice to them and start it off. These things have a sort of guilt-stupidity-lemming-like momentum thing going on — when someone stands up and you don’t you may feel guilty or feel bad for the actors or those already standing or you maybe think you may not be a good judge and didn’t realize the play was so good. Well, you will likely only see a couple dozen performances in your life (if you’re lucky) that deserve that kind of praise. Don’t cheapen yourself or the practice. You are really cheating the actors themselves from receiving sincere praise when they are superb, as well as, your fellow theatergoers by letting the actors think that’s all they have to do to get such accolades; they don’t have to excel. My advice, sit down, the performers know they shouldn’t get a standing ovation. You should too.
Walking Away
By: Hawkeye Pete Egan B.
Tags: Surrender, Work, Friends Of Cowbird, Walking, Fear

I made a decision last week that it’s time to go. Clearly, all the signs are there, and my gut is not just whispering, it is screaming, “Get out, by whatever means available, just go. This ship is sinking, and there is nothing you can do to stop it from doing so.” It is, and there isn’t. I need to go.

I went in yesterday, and slowly found myself second-guessing my decision. “What about this great view?” I will miss this. But, it’s like the first year the Washington Nationals were in their beautiful new ballpark, but the team was atrocious that year. By mid-season, I could no longer justify my season tickets. It got old saying, “How about that ballpark”, when the team was doing nothing and going nowhere. I had to go.

I’ve only told a couple people — granted, they were the most important people to have told, but I have let it be known that I need to go, and they are putting the wheels in motion to make that possible.

Nothing to do now but strap in, throw my hands up in the air, and get ready for one wild ride. It helps, also, to scream. Ya-a-a-a — a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a — let’s go.
Universal
By: Salitha Nirmana Meththasinghe
Tags: Life Lessons, Poetry, Nature, Life, Equality

Sun showers profusely every speck in its range with rays

showing no discrimination

Water quenches the thirst of the saints

as well as the damned

Earth bears the weight of both pure and filthy

never bothering to complain

Rivers reach their ultimate destination with pride

happily sharing the same taste at the end

Words of sages point a single direction

To look into nature, to find harmony and balance in it

And if framed the right way, its lessons are in plain sight

Yet ignorance and greed are fueling the race of life

impeding the vision with hallucinations

that hide the essentials for peaceful coexistence

Togetherness, understanding, friendship and respect…..!

And meanwhile, blinding mankind to the key to those virtues

which is kindness,the light at the end of the tunnel…..

Ego, race, arrogance and hatred…..!

When those venomous snakes sting you

think of sun, earth and seas

Despite their mightiness

the way they exist without violating the surroundings

while serving their own purpose

Isn’t treating each other with equality

acknowledging their circumstances and boundaries of our own

the ultimate formula to peace and satisfaction?

Rather than dancing to the impulses a corrupt, speeding

society has imposed on us?

Isn’t that the ultimate lesson Mother Nature has been trying

to teach us since the beginning?

The one we’ve been failing to observe

while chasing colorful mirages blaming the rest

of the world for all the misery we’ve been carrying?
Cryptocurrency News Roundup | July 30— August 5
By: Pete C
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, ICO, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin

Cryptocurrency News Roundup | July 30— August 5

Welcome to the PlayChip blog cryptocurrency news roundup, where you can keep up to date on all of the weeks important cryptocurrency and blockchain related news.

CommBanks Ethereum Based Blockchain Experiment

Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Martin Place Branch

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia announced this week that they have completed a demonstration of a blockchain solution designed to track goods as they are transported along their supply chains.

The project involved transporting a 17 tonne shipment of almonds between Sunarysia, Victoria and Hamburg, Germany. The experiment was performed using the Ethereum blockchain. Using a ‘private blockchain’ implementation CommBank is able to require that all nodes and network participants are authorised, a standard practice for large commercial entities trialling blockchain solutions.

A successful proof-of-concept for a blockchain solution, being operated by Australia’s largest financial institution, is a strong indicator that the technology is already on the path toward mainstream implementation.
Centered Ep 3 | Design at Ola, India’s Largest Ride-sharing Company
By: Yasmine Evjen
Tags: Mobile First, India, Progressive Web App, Next Billion Users, Web Development

Every second, 3 more Indians come online for the first time. That’s over 10,000 people every hour. Smartphone ownership and usage outpace desktop devices, making India a mobile-first nation. I met with Ola, India’s largest ride-sharing company, at their headquarters in Bengaluru to learn how product creators are designing for these next billion users.

The Challenge: Mobile-first nation

The influx of users coming online in India opens the door to a lot of potential for product creators, but there are still significant barriers to overcome. 33% of smartphone users in India run out of storage every day, and the first thing they do when they need to clear up space is to delete installed apps.

“These are people who typically have low-end smartphones, they’re characterized by having low memory” 1:29

In many countries, it’s common to submit an email address when creating a new account in an app or online service. Desktop users are likely to have an email account that they check daily. But this isn’t the case for mobile-first nations like India. Email isn’t the norm. Instead, those who come online for the first time using a mobile device often prefer to use their phone number as a sign-in credential.

The Takeaway: Progressive Web App

By creating a web experience that is reliable, fast, and engaging, Ola was able to remove a lot of those barriers. By removing CAPTCHA and the requirement of an email, Ola moved to a mobile-first approach and increased their conversion rate by 30%. Thoughtful considerations like these help us design for mobile-first nations and create products for the next billion users.

“A Progressive web app is a bridge between the best of what the web has to offer and a native app experience. A PWA offers me the SEO benefits that I need for some of my transportation rides, but also gives me a smooth native app-like experience.“ Dipika Kapadia, Senior Director of Product Management, Ola 2:37

Tools and Techniques: Making your app feel fast
Will Racism Cease, to Exist?
By: Nicole Bedford
Tags: Travel, This Happened To Me, Culture, Racism, Equality

I remember the first time someone referred to me as a nigger. Hours after the incident I had to unpack what it was I was feeling. In the end, it was fiery anger that gave way to sadness.

Especially after an Irish friend tried to tell me, perched on Caucacity Mountain, I had no right to any of the emotions I felt because he knew no better.

We were volunteers working in the Republic of Georgia. A former Soviet country that had been kept isolated from the world.

For most Georgians, our arrival in 2010 was the first they’d had so many outsiders; the xenophobia was lit.

The racism was a shock to the system.

I was walking with a statuesque Nigerian-American, the girl next door from North Dakota, and a guy from New York. When the call rang out from across the court, we all froze. We didn’t stop walking but it was as if ice had crept through us.

“Claudia, did you hear that too.” I was incredulous and couldn’t be sure it wasn’t an auditory hallucination.

“Sure did.” She replied voice clipped.

We all continued on our way in silence until we were well away from the court.

Will there ever be a time where racism isn’t an aspect of human society?

No there will never be such a time.

Humans are incapable of relinquishing their labels for the banal, categorizing people by the amount of melanin in their skin, not as innocuous, will never end.

My short time in Georgia taught me that racism went beyond atrocities like Slavery, Jim Crow Laws, Segregation and ethnic cleansings. For the original Caucasians in Georgia, our blackness was something that registered as other and needed to be demeaned. He was jovial, I suppose, to soften the impact of the insult.

As long as white is associated with the color of pristine purity; and brown associated with the color of shit; black associated with evil; red with blood. Racism will thrive in the select that feel their whiteness is superior.

While in Georgia I experienced a wide range of reactions as a person of color. From being poked and prodded by strangers, death stares, having my hair touched, and outright sexual proposals in public.

It was an intense time where I felt like a zoo display. Sometimes there was hostility, other times curiosity. It was the first time I felt conscious about my own skin.

Perhaps racism isn’t intrinsic, maybe it is a learned behavior, but life has taught me that for the select, anything that isn’t white isn’t right. A sentiment upheld on the colorless and colorful side of the human complexion scale.

History has ruined us. The side-effect of European Imperialism has left us fractured, where race has taken on a different meaning. Teaching fear which leads to the subjugation of anyone deemed lesser.

And it is for this reason that racism will remain alive.

There has been a progression. Race relations are better than they were 200 years ago. However, hatred and ignorance are like weeds. Unless you destroy the roots, the weeds will always return to choke your garden.
How To View The End Of A Relationship So You Can Move Forward
By: Katharine Chan, Msc, Bsc
Tags: Relationships, Love, Mindset Coaching, Self Reflection, Recover

How To View The End Of A Relationship So You Can Move Forward

Job loss, end of a friendship, break-ups…

At the end of a relationship, how can we view them so it’s easier to move forward?

Did you fired or did you quit? Did he break with you? Or did you break up with him? Did she unfriend/unfollow you first? Or did you?

How much you care about the answers to these questions depends on your ego.

How much you judge someone for how they answer these questions is how hard you judge yourself when a relationship ends for you.

Because what is the ultimate outcome of each of these questions?

It doesn’t matter who broke up with whom, whether leaving a job was by choice or not.

The relationship ended.

Everyone’s heard of the saying, “one door closes, another door opens.”

It’s not anything new but I want to expand on that.

Like a Hotel.

Using this analogy will help you change your mindset, helping you get over a relationship that ended or give you the courage to end a relationship that you know you should have ended a long time ago.

Hotel of romantic relationships.

Hotel of jobs.

Hotel of friendships.

When the door closes, it doesn’t matter if you closed the door or if someone closed the door for you.

It’s closed.

Now, where are you? The lobby.

Depending on your mindset after the door closed, this lobby can be a shitty one like the Motel 6 with a broken vending machine and a creepy dude behind the counter or a fancy one like Shangri La.

You can stay in the lobby as long as you want and recover, read some books, get some snacks, go to the gym, or get a facial.

When you’re ready, you can start looking for the types of rooms you’d like to stay in. (ie enter the dating scene, find a job, make friends)

You don’t even have to stay at that hotel.

You can leave those big shiny doors to the open world and do something else.

Don’t want to start dating again?

Don’t. The Hotel of Relationships will always be there.

Have enough money saved to do some travelling?

Do it.

Always wanted to open up an Etsy shop and sell your sock puppets?

Do that. Screw the Hotel of jobs.

Therefore, it doesn’t matter how a relationship ends, it’s how you start your next chapter that determines where you go in life.

So think of it as a hotel and perhaps this mindset will help you get over a relationship that ended or give you the courage to end a relationship that you know you should end.

So Readers, which hotel are you currently focusing on?
Logic 101: The burden of proof
By: Jonathan Wayne
Tags: Philosophy

The default position is always disbelief. Period. Logic and reason falls apart if we fail to understand this concept.

The burden of proof identifies the default position in the step-wise process in our understanding of True things. This is where the logical obligation to provide evidence rests. This is a fundamental aspect of rational thought and reasoning.

If we present a claim toward Truth, then the burden of proof falls squarely on the idea we have presented.

If the evidence presented does not satisfy the burden of proof, then the belief in the claim is not logically justified. The claim therefore cannot be considered True (yet).

Disbelief (skepticism) is logically the default position for any claim, always. To shift the burden of proof causes anything we can imagine to become true to us. This is not logical as everything cannot be True. The position of skepticism (or the position that does not claim a relationship between ideas) is known as the null hypothesis.
Richardson ISD — District News — State Farm Insurance Donation
By: Risd Digital Media
Tags: Education, State Farm, Public Education, Partnerships, Donations

The Richardson ISD Excellence in Education Foundation is benefitting from its partnership with State Farm Insurance.

State Farm donated $10,000 that will be split between various aspects of the RISD AVID Program. The mission of AVID, Advancement Via Individual Determination, is to close the achievement gap by preparing all students for college readiness and success in a global society.

Professional Development will benefit from half of the donation this summer through multi-day training for principals and school administration. The other half will be distributed as scholarships for RISD graduating AVID seniors pursuing post-secondary education.

This generous donation will go a long way in helping the RISD Excellence in Education Foundation and the AVID program with their continued efforts designed to help students develop the skills they need to be successful in college.

“State Farm is a wonderful business partner,” said Maria Conroy, Executive Director of the EiE Foundation. “We appreciate their donation as well as their ongoing community efforts.”

In addition to this substantial donation, State Farm recently provided 60 laptops to the RISD Adult Literacy Program, and continues supporting initiatives with the RISD Career and Technology Department.

To learn more or to donate to the RISD Excellence in Education Foundation, contact Jannae Castanon at (469)593–0243.
Why Are Voice-Over and Mo-Cap Actors Not Nominated For Oscars?
By: Joel Eisenberg
Tags: Pixar, Technology, Movies, Animation, Oscars

My question is this: Why can actors covered in considerable makeup and costuming be fair game for Oscar voters, while actors who either provide their prodigious talents to animated work, or those who perform computer-manipulated characterizations, have been completely ignored?

I am not implying a desire for yet another Oscars category, though that inclusion would be better than no recognition at all. No, I am calling for an across-the-board serious consideration of all performances within all four existing performance categories.

The following are among the most iconic and criminally ignored performances in Oscar history …

Andy Serkis as Caesar in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011), “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (2014), and “War for the Planet of the Apes” (2017)

“That was not a performance,” said one angry and very prominent older filmmaker to me over dinner. “That was a computer show.”

An hour prior, we had exited the magnificent “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.” My friend hated it. I thought he was out of his mind, despite his bonafides. Still do.

“It was the film and performance of the year so far,” I countered.

“Computers should stay far away from movies,” he said. “And before you say it, Serkis will never be nominated for an Oscar, and he doesn’t deserve one.”

(For a brief history of motion capture, aka “mo-cap” technology, see my Medium article, below.)

My filmmaker friend has been in large part responsible for some of pop-culture’s more enduring moments, and for an Academy (of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) member his thoughts are, stunningly, in the majority. Despite the occasional fan outcry for a new Oscar category to honor voice-over performances or actors, to date nothing is on the table.

However, utilizing motion capture technology, as popularized in 2009’s “Avatar” and here taken to another level, Andy Serkis delivered a performance for the ages, one that ranged from heartbreak to immense strength. Caesar was a veritable lost child in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” before fulfilling his destiny as a highly-effective leader in the subsequent films. To watch the character is to cry with him, and struggle for justice alongside him.

The fact that the ape-actors in these films, including Serkis, wore tracking dots so a computer could fill in their ape design later is the greatest source of misunderstanding when it comes to such performances. Serkis’ performance in the first film was delivered with soulful eyes and commitment to physicality. He did not utter his first word until the latter third of the film, and so the actor’s challenge was to inform the character with humanity and gravitas without speaking. Once he spoke, from then forward in the series, he was a leader who embodied the very concept of respect.

And most of us believed every minute of it.

Serkis absolutely deserved Academy recognition.
Stock Market Visualizations
By: Ben Shoemate
Tags: Visualization, Web Design

I miss the old Map of the Market which was online since 1998 and was one of the first visualizations on the web.

This was long my go to site for a quick update on how the market was doing. Who is up, who is down, and why? It seems SmartMoney has sold out and removed it. Perhaps after 15 years, and since it was build with Flash, the time had come.

That left me looking around for a replacement. I found this one at FinViz

Each square is sized according to its market capitalization (the relative cost to buy every share at its current price). As you can see, you can buy about 2 Googles or 3 ExxonMobiles for the price of 1 Apple. When you see the market like this you get a sense of how big (or over/under valued) some of these stocks might be. Another cool feature of this chart is the Bubble view:

This shows how far from the pack Apple is. When you zoom out to see more of the world you can see how big the stock market has become.

What I was interested in is the Health Care sector which as you can see is bigger than Industrial Goods (the so called Military Industrial complex), and bigger than “Big Oil”

Below is a screenshot from the desktop tool StockTouch which, by the way, I discovered when it was an editors choice in the Apple App Store. It has a good interface to drill deep and read the news, but the one thing I miss about the original is how it showed the relative size of each industry and stock. This chart treats them all as equals (if they make it into the top 100 that is). I would not recommend this for OS X — it worked fine on the iPad.
Routing Orthogonal Diagram Connectors in JavaScript
By: Jose M Menendez
Tags: Diagrams, JavaScript, Orthogonal

Quick links

Background

This article is about how I got this problem solved in a robust way. Personally, this is how I got this out of my system.

TL;DR: I know there’s libraries for this. It was just for fun.

Orthogonal connectors in diagrams. They are my favorite when designing any diagram, and I should specify that I also love expressing things and thoughts as diagrams.

No that long ago, I was working on an app that required modeling some flows using a diagram-like editor. The use case was simple and enclosed enough not to go to a complex and chunky third party solution for it.

I won’t enter full-rant mode about libraries, but it was a small piece of code to bring along an entire chunk of a very specialized library for such a seemingly small task.

Everything was going all right until we hit the point of connecting the shapes. We were shooting of course for orthogonal connectors as the best way of displaying beautiful diagrams. It was one of those things you just don’t think much about, how it works or how complex the implementation could be; but turned out to be a way more sophisticated task than anticipated.

A few years later, still feeling the ghost of that challenge haunting me from my closet, I decided to give it a try again. This is the story of how I came with the approach presented in this article.

The way the live demo displays information is specifically designed to enable a good understanding of how the algorithm works. In my opinion, the solution is production-ready.

I decided to write this article because of how hard it was to find someone that explains simply how to achieve this routing. I even gave up when trying to follow the code on the popular libraries that do this. Code about geometry is often almost unreadable if there is not a graphical reference.

You might find the work useful, it might inspire you to tackle a ghost of your past, or just find the process entertaining enough to give it a read.
Python for exploring the Floral Reflectance Database (FReD)
By: Nate Barlow
Tags: Jupyter Notebook, Machine Learning, Data Science, Kew Gardens, Ds In The Real World

Analysis: Dimensionality Reduction

A straightforward first step to analysing this data is to reduce the data from a high dimension (reflectance spectra from 300 to 700 nm) into some optimal (and arbitrary) lower dimension. Let’s then sample 664 spectra from FReD and — after standard scaling — transform the data using principle component analysis (PCA). If you are familiar with PCA, you will be pleased to know that the first PC contains 52% of the variance, the second 77%, third 89% and fourth 93%. This method does a pretty good job and in 2-D we can right away see how different flower families have some degree of clustering, for example below: the Asteraceae (sunflower) have their top left corner cluster in orange and the Lamiaceae (mint) appear to stay in the lower part in purple. Still, the Fabaceae (legumes) family looks to be uniformly distributed in green. That is not really surprising as we don’t expect flower families to have all the same spectral characteristics — you can even have plants of the same species with different coloured flowers.

2-D PCA plot based on top 4 flower Families

What might be interesting, however, is to think about how different pollinators might relate to this cluster. What we really want to understand is what features make a pollinator decide to pollinate? Based on the same logic we can see below how bees in orange do not appear to cluster and are happy to pollinate everywhere. Flies in green seem to cover a little less of the plot, and beetles even less so. Are beetles finicky pollinators?

2-D PCA plot based on bees, flies and beetles

A Jupyter notebook example is given here:

Analysis (future): Pollinator Predictor

Unfortunately, there is not enough data in FReD yet to build any deep learning models. Hopefully the FReD community can collect more data quickly because it would be very interesting to see how well we could use electromagnetic spectra as a tool to predict pollinator type. We already know that bugs use floral cues like colour, shape, pattern, volatile compounds and even electric field, but we don’t necessarily know who the effective pollinators are all the time (as we can see from the missing data in FReD).

Besides sitting and watching flowers all day for potential pollinators — which sounds fun actually — or setting up camera traps, I suspect that we could soon be able to deploy statistical learning models to predict them in the first place.

TLDR;

There isn’t enough Floral Reflectance Data yet to build any deep learning models, though based on a preliminary analysis the field is very much ready for it.

References:

Arnold SEJ, Faruq S, Savolainen V, McOwan PW, Chittka L, 2010 FReD: The Floral Reflectance Database — A Web Portal for Analyses of Flower Colour. PLoS ONE 5(12): e14287. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014287

Dominic Clarke, Heather Whitney, Gregory Sutton, Daniel Robert, Detection and Learning of Floral Electric Fields by Bumblebees. Science:Vol. 340, Issue 6128, pp. 66–69. doi:10.1126/science.1230883
Black Americans Will Benefit Less Than Expected From Student Loan Forgiveness
By: Asger Bruhn
Tags: Economics, Politics, Economy, BlackLivesMatter, Government

US POLITICS

Black Americans Will Benefit Less Than Expected From Student Loan Forgiveness

A look at a policy proposal that will mostly benefit high-income households

Photo by Jane Carmona on Unsplash

The debate about student debt is heating up. Driven by ‘left-leaning’ democrats, the coming Biden administration is already under from fellow partisans.

The message is clear, whether stated by Elisabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or Bernie Sanders. Student loan forgiveness should be a priority.

But forgiving student debt is a highly regressive policy. Regressive means the benefits of imposing forgiveness are skewed toward the top of the income scale.

The broad support for a regressive policy amongst so-called progressive politicians is puzzling

Since most of the student debt is held by high-income households — the top 40 percent earning American households account for around 60 percent of loan balances — it will mainly benefit families with high income. That counts for both universal and capped forgiveness.

The broad support for a regressive policy amongst so-called progressive politicians is puzzling. Also, it is not a desirable stimulus tool.

It’s possible that politicians, knowing their voter demographics, are trying to “buy votes”. But it is also possible they aren’t aware of the effects loan forgiveness would have.

Student debt is distributed amongst those who earn the most. Taking into account many low-income households will never repay their entire balance skews the distribution even more to the right. Since the debt distribution across the income scale is highly progressive, forgiving debt is highly regressive. Picture from Catherine & Yannelis (2020)

A new working paper by two economists, from the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania respectively, shed some additional light on the distribution of student debt and how it burdens debtors.

Further, the authors investigate how different demographics are affected by a broad variety of forgiveness-related policy actions.

The below presents some of the main results regarding the effects of forgiveness across ethnicities.
The Science of Price Future Price Prediction
By: Victor Silva
Tags: Money, Machine Learning, Data Science, Investing, Stock Market

Photo by Words as Pictures from StockSnap

Since the middle age, the stock market has been in the imaginary of many people that seek wealth and money. Even the brightest minds have joined the obscure and chaotic world of speculation. There are tales about Sir Isaac Newton making and losing the today’s equivalent to millions of US dollars investing in the South Sea Company. Note the word speculation, not investing. Speculation means that one is “guessing” future prices, based on some conjecture, but without strong foundations. Contrasting investing and speculation is an extensive topic and I will cover it another time.

The question that we address in this post is whether we can predict the next price of an asset using automatic methods. We will answer that question empirically and demonstrate a popular method to predict future prices. More specifically, we will use the ARIMA model. Finally, we will measure the performance of the methods in terms of profits and losses.

I promise that I will only develop basic level mathematics in this post. By basic I mean that I won’t be showing the inside of the method used —although it is quite interesting. I will only use some basic to compute profits, which I am sure is everyone’s favourite part — the money!

Note that this post does not constitute financial advice. If you would like to invest your money, please consult a professional. Above all, do your own research.

Benchmark

First, lets look at how much one would have made by buying and holding $100 worth of S&P500 (SPY) index shares exactly 10 years ago. The SPY is considered a benchmark, meaning that, for many, it is the go-to when looking at how the financial markets are performing. Some other popular benchmarks are the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI), the Nasdaq Composite (IXIC).
How to Reap the Mental Benefits of Travelling While Being Stuck at Home
By: Alexander M. Combstrong
Tags: Self Improvement, Psychology, Travel, Self, Mental Health

Reinvent Yourself

Travel is a great way to reinvent yourself. It gives you a new perspective on your life from far away, where you can more clearly see parts of your life that aren’t so clear when you’re in a routine day in day out.

But there’s also an opportunity to gain a new perspective when you’re stuck at home. Any time your routine is shaken up is an opportunity to see your life from a new angle. Time away from a job might reveal how much you don’t even care for it, or allow you to start new ventures which would never have crossed your mind when stuck in the 9–5 grind.

Of course, you’re not expected to do this. You haven’t failed if others have done it and you haven’t. Everyone is different. You may love your old life and can’t wait to get it back. Maybe it’s even revealed how grateful you are for it. It’s all fine. Not everything applies to everyone. But for some, this has been as much as an opportunity to reinvent as a trip through Southeast Asia.

Author Nassim Taleb coined the term Antifragile in his excellent book by the same name (he writes on Medium too, here). Taleb explains the term like this:

“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure , risk, and uncertainty... Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”

…or, as is the book’s tagline, “Things that gain from disorder.”

Volatility… randomness… disorder…stressors… all words that can apply to being stuck at home in pandemic restrictions just as much as a travel adventure. If your life is antifragile, you stand to grow and come out of this all better, not worse – either through sorting a few things out, getting some new perspective on things, or completely reinventing yourself.

It’s worth thinking through your time and seeing what parts of your life, if any, are better now than before that you can take forward. What have you learned that will be useful in the future? What about you is antifragile? You can be happy about that. Noticing these good things about the situation – things that are genuine and positive – is a good way to fight back against negativity bias, our brains’ natural tendency to focus on the negative, and stay in a positive frame of mind.

You can use what CBT calls a reframe or cognitive restructuring here if it helps – try to see some of the situation as an opportunity to somehow improve something rather than something that’s imposed on you. Reframing is at the core of CBT and has been hugely effective for me. See if you can find a more helpful way for you to see the situation.
Data Engineering != Spark. There’s a common misconception in Big…
By: Jesse Anderson
Tags: Data Engineering, Big Data, Data, 97 Things

The misconception that Apache Spark is all you’ll need for your data pipeline is common. The reality is that you’re going to need components from three different general types of technologies in order to create a data pipeline. These three general types of Big Data technologies are:

Compute

Storage

Messaging

Fixing and remedying this misconception is crucial to success with Big Data projects or one’s own learning about Big Data. Spark is just one part of a larger Big Data ecosystem that’s necessary to create data pipelines.

Put another way:

Data Engineering = Compute + Storage + Messaging + Coding + Architecture + Domain Knowledge + Use Cases

Batch and Real-time Systems

There are generally 2 core problems that you have to solve in a batch data pipeline. The first is compute and the second is the storage of data. Spark is a good solution for handling batch compute. But the more difficult solution is to find the right storage — or more correctly, finding the different and optimized storage technologies for that use case.

Compute Component

Compute is how your data gets processed. These compute frameworks are responsible for running the algorithms and the majority of your code. For Big Data frameworks, they’re responsible for all resource allocation, running the code in a distributed fashion, and persisting the results.

Storage Component

Storage is how your data gets persisted permanently. For simple storage requirements, people will just dump their files into a directory. As it becomes slightly more difficult, we start to use partitioning. This will put files in directories with specific names. A common partitioning method is to use the date of the data as part of the directory name.

NoSQL Databases

For more optimized storage requirements, we start using NoSQL databases. The need for NoSQL databases is especially prevalent when you have a real-time system. Most companies will store data in both a simple storage technology and one or more NoSQL database. Storing data multiple times handles the different use cases or read/write patterns that are necessary. One application may need to read everything and another application may only need specific data.

Messaging Component

Messaging is how knowledge or events get passed in real-time. You start to use messaging when there is a need for real-time systems. These messaging frameworks are used to ingest and disseminate a large amount of data. This ingestion and dissemination is crucial to real-time systems because it solves the first mile and last mile problems.

This was originally published on jesse-anderson.com.
The Holiday Season
By: Thomas Cunningham
Tags: Prose, Hypocricy, December, Holidays, Literally Literary

I grossly dislike the Holiday Season. At one point in my past, I used the word “hate” to describe it but now that feels all too harsh. Hate is such a strong word and I think people throw around much too loosely.

Why do I “grossly dislike” The Holiday Season you might ask ? Well, it’s hasn’t always been this way but, as far back as I can remember, I have never been much of a fan of this time of year.

Family gathering and get togethers, shopping sprees and gift wrappings. Decorating homes in a facade of lights and color-coded adornments while we masquerade ourselves around in the “spirit of giving” when underneath it’s all actually just the “spirit of spending”.

It just always seemed to me that everyone was faking it. Lying to themselves and everyone else around them because that’s what they were taught to do; indoctrinated by family and society as whole, well, societies that call themselves Christians and Catholics alike.

I’m happy and joyous. I’m a giving soul.

When underneath the layers of deception, they were just angry, frustrated and stressed out of their minds. Questioning to themselves why they keep putting on this act year after year. Lying to themselves and being nice to people they dislike, smiling while hiding their disgust, which is mostly of themselves.

Brainwashed into deeply believing that this one time of Year, we are suppose to be joyously giving whether it be by those societal or religious indoctrinations alone or combined.

Stressing ourselves to the point of exhaustion while running around gathering more and more items, more and more things.
Web Development — get a low cost, world class education (3)
By: Anthony Kuang
Tags: JavaScript, CSS, Programming, HTML, Web Development

CSS is so very important, and I hope you will not neglect to study it deeply. It is simply a massive topic. I stand by my belief that you do not need a framework like Bootstrap or Tailwind in 2020. Instead, spend your time to master Flexbox and Grid. There are self-proclaimed “full-stacks” out there who don’t even consistently know how to center elements — I hope you don’t fall into that bunch.
Cuddles and Masculinity
By: Fred Shirley
Tags: Masculinity, Hugs, Toxic Masculinity, Friendship, LGBTQ

I had this friend when I was at school — David was his name. He’s one of the nicest guys I’ve had the pleasure of being friends with.

I’m gay, but David didn’t know I was gay. At the time, I was pretty much completely closeted apart from to a couple of people. Had I told him, I’m fairly sure he wouldn’t have cared anyway. We were young and open-minded.

I didn’t (and still don’t) exhibit many qualities that would traditionally be considered masculine. I’m a gay guy, and happily a gay guy, but I certainly don’t fit the stereotype of masculinity.

David on the other hand, did. It’s who he was.

He played rugby, he was toned and muscular. He prided himself on being a bit of a ladies’ man.

David and I had been close friends since before primary school. We used to spend a lot of time together with me would often going to his after the school day had finished.

We’d watch films together and we’d spoon. We just really liked cuddling. Perhaps it was the intimacy of it, or the contact; I don’t know. Nothing ever happened sexually (or otherwise) between us. I think he had a girlfriend at the time.

I can assure you: David is totally straight. We were just friends. (I didn’t have a crush on him, either).

I wouldn’t say straight men cuddling other men and enjoying it is common by any stretch. There is still a lot of stigma there and it’ll be a long time, especially in Western society, before men can openly embrace and show platonic love for each other.

But you always find people who you wouldn’t expect to buck the trend. David was one of those people and I’m sure he wasn’t alone.

The sooner we break down these barriers, the better. The world needs more openly and freely displayed love in it.
Short Demo Video of Whalefolio
By: Wei Ly
Tags: UI Design, Startup, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, App Development

Exploring Use Cases for the mass adoption of Blockchain technology. Co Founder of Whalefolio.com

Follow
Consider The Benefits of Nordic Skiing This Winter
By: Thomas O'Grady
Tags: Exercise, Running, Running Tips, Motivation, Health And Fitness

Cross country skiing has the ability to compliment your running in several ways because of how it engages the body. First and foremost, cross country skiing is something that works the entire body. Distance runners, whether competitive or not, often forget their upper body. While a lot of extra mass may not be beneficial for distance running, a strong upper body IS important. Sprinters live by the notion that if the arms keep moving the legs will follow, and this is true for distance runners too. Having a strong arm swing throughout your entire run will improve your efficiency and help keep your momentum moving forward. In distance runners, arm swing from side to side, caused by underdeveloped muscles and/or poor technique, can cause substantial rotational torque on the body, which in turn may increase injury and fatigue risk. Because Nordic skiers have to move their arms forward and backward, the patterned muscle movements developed in sport may translate to better form in running.

Skiing is a full-body exercise that also requires a lot of balance. The use of your core and accessory muscles to balance your body as you glide across the snow at high speeds will help develop body stability. Improved body stability means better form and less fatigue on the run. Because you are gliding across the snow and not pounding the pavement, these gains come without the damage to your tendons and ligaments that running causes.

Summary:

Running is a great activity that many people love to participate in from day-to-day. To bring your game to the next level, it’s important to think of yourself as not only a runner but as an overall athlete. Taking this mentality will make you seek out other activities that build your overall capacity for health and performance. Choosing to supplement your running with Nordic Skiing this winter is potentially one of the best complimentary sports a runner can engage in during the colder months of the year. Nordic skiing may be an even better option this year because, in addition to being cheap and effective, it also does not require big crowds for participation.
Wash Over Me
By: Jonathan Greene
Tags: Poetry, Rain, Self, Acceptance, Awareness

Wash Over Me

A Poem

Photo by Tristan Gassert on Unsplash

I’ve been resisting the truth

and hiding from it

buried deep within

the mental confines

of this home

There is no end in sight

and my constant need

to use that as a crutch

is killing my creativity

and slowly, it’s killing me

Dawn breaks, a new day

to reconsider acceptance

and bathe in awareness

that all of this is

outside of my control

My four walls provide

a barrier to the air,

but not to my happiness

Today I want to let it rain

inside of me, the tears

of worry and the quicksand

we are all sinking into

I want to allow it

to wash over me

Each drop a new vow

to be kind to myself

and to accept the unacceptable

because there is no other way

to muddle through this time

without allowing the

raindrops to pour

and cleanse us fresh

and appreciate a new day
Wool Weekly — Volume 14
By: Emma Cookson
Tags: Manchester, Startup, Networking, Digital, Digital Marketing

This week at Wool Digital, we have been getting ready for our launch party, which is taking place at the end of the week, Charlotte has attended some great networking events, and we have become a member of the Greater Manchester Chamber! Find out more.