fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Why Jupyter Is Not My Ideal Notebook
By: Clément Walter
Tags: Jupyter Notebook, Machine Learning, Programming, Data Science, Productivity

Jupyter main features are:

inline code execution

easy idea structuring

nice displays of pictures and dataframe

This overall flexibility has made it a preferred tool compared to the more rustic iPython command line. However it should not be forgotten that this is not more than an REPL where you can navigate efficiently throughout the history. Thus it is not a production tool.

However, tons of machine learning developers have experienced the deep pain of refactoring a deep learning notebook into a real algorithm in production (also reddit or stackoverflow).

Keeping a lean mindset, we should strive to reduce waste as much as possible.

Introduction

At Sicara, we build machine learning based products for our customers:

machine learning: the customer comes with a business need and we have to deliver a satisfying algorithm as fast as possible;

we build products: we need to develop in a production-ready mindset. Algorithms are deployed in the cloud, served and updated with APIs, etc.

First of all you definitely need a versioning tool which is a pain with Jupyter (also reddit, reddit again, quora). Not only for your code, but also for your experiments. You need to be able to re-run any results got so far with 100% confidence. How often come data scientists with results they cannot reproduce?

Furthermore, when using notebooks, people often tend to mix three kinds of usage:

development: defining methods and tools to actually do something; debugging/applying: running the piece of code with real data to see what is going on; visualization: presenting the results in a clean and reproducible output.

In order to reduce waste, these steps should be clearly defined and separated so as to be able to change one without the other and vice versa. I have come to the conclusion that

to produce high-quality tested code, better using a first-class IDE

to debug code, there are visual debugging tools

to write down reports, I am more comfortable with an expressive markup language (markdown, reST, Latex)

Fortunately a well-configured IDE can do all of these things. For instance if you come from the R community you certainly use RStudio which allows you to do so:

native code completion, auto-fix, etc.

direct visual debugging

Rmarkdown/knitr/Sweave to generate dynamic and beautiful reports.

Develop production-ready code

As soon as you want to make an experiment, i.e. write a method to do something to your data, you should think about its usage, limit case, etc. Do it in a separate file, document and unit-test it. Doing so you make sure that:

your method actually does what you want;

your code can be safely used somewhere else in your project.

Because you will have to organize your tools, it makes you think about the structure of your pipeline, the things you need, what you are likely to change, etc.

…

Read the full article here.
Drawing The Tonys
By: Liza Donnelly
Tags: New York, Visual Journalism, Theater, Tony Awards, Storytelling

Tony day began early for me when I took the #1 train downtown to Rockefeller Center. I was sheduled to attend the dress rehesal at 10:00, but I wanted to get there early to draw outside. It was fun walking around midtown Manhattan early on a Sunday — the streets were relatively empty, street vendors were putting up their umbrellas. Near Rockefeller Center, NYPD police were gathering in different groups.

Man on the subway as I headed downtown.

Once inside Rockefeller Center, the dress rehearsal lobby was full of invited guests — they were nothing if not enthusiastic theater people. The added benefit of attending a dress rehearsal is the off-script quips from actors, particularly from James Cordon. Plus, you get to see what some celebs wear when they are not all dressed up and in tons of makeup. The downside is not all celebrities come to the dress rehearsal.
How to Get Your First Article Published as an Online Writer
By: Thom Gallet
Tags: Work, Publishing, Freelancing, Writing, Marketing

When I went from casually blogging to consistently writing online, the biggest hurdle in front of me was getting published.

One year later I have permanently conquered my fear of submitting, and now, my articles are published on a weekly basis. It feels awesome to have this confidence, but it was a long trek to get here, and it all started with getting over that first hurdle.

So if you’re struggling right now in the online writing game, I want you to understand getting published is totally within your reach. You’re not a bad writer; you just need a quick reminder of what’s important.

The main reason you’re getting rejected right now is that your articles are probably missing two things: simplicity and (or) originality. That’s it.

Sure, you have to worry about other things, like proper formatting and grammar; but I’m going to assume you’re smart enough to have those figured out. In this article don’t expect me to waste three paragraphs explaining the importance of proper spelling. This isn’t grad school.

Instead, let me break down simplicity and originality, and how you can effectively apply it to your everyday writing.
How to Write Perfect Python Command-line Interfaces
By: Yannick Wolff
Tags: Python, Command Line, Interfaces, Machine Learning, Productivity

Let’s take a simple example

Let’s try to apply these rules to a concrete simple example: a script to encrypt and decrypt messages using Caesar cipher.

Imagine that you have an already written encrypt function (implemented as below), and you want to create a simple script which allows to encrypt and decrypt messages. We want to let the user choose the mode between encryption (by default) and decryption, and choose the key (1 by default) with command line arguments.

The first thing our script needs to do is to get the values of command line arguments. And when I google “python command line arguments”, the first result I get is about sys.argv . So let’s try to use this method…

The “beginners” method

sys.argv is a list containing all the arguments typed by the user when running your script (including the script name itself).

For example, if I type:

> python caesar_script.py --key 23 --decrypt my secret message pb vhfuhw phvvdjh

the list contains:

['caesar_script.py', '--key', '23', '--decrypt', 'my', 'secret', 'message']

So we would loop on this arguments list, looking for a '--key' (or '-k' ) to know the key value, and looking for a '--decrypt' to use the decryption mode (actually by simply using the opposite of the key as the key).

Our script would finally look like this piece of code:

This script more or less respects the recommendations stated above:

There are a default key value and a default mode Basic error cases are handled (no input text provided or unknown arguments) A succinct documentation is printed in these error cases, and when calling the script with no argument:

> python caesar_script_using_sys_argv.py Usage: python caesar.py [ --key <key> ] [ --encrypt|decrypt ] <text>

However, this version of the Caesar script is quite long (39 lines, which doesn’t even include the logic of the encryption itself) and ugly.

There has to be a better way to parse command line arguments…

What about argparse?

argparse is the Python standard library module for parsing command-line arguments.

Let us see how would our Caesar script look like using argparse :

… Read the full article on Sicara’s blog here.
Why We All Need Design-led Content Marketing
By: Design Studio
Tags: Design Led Marketing, Design, Brand Strategy, Content Marketing, Marketing

Ever since marketing has become a buzzword and a key to getting many customers, human psychology has been dissected and carefully laid out so as to understand how brands can hook onto its no-longer-complex behaviour. As such, certain things, like how visuals can attract people and get stamped into memories more than what texts alone can do, is no longer something to gasp at.

A study in 2019 by Neilsen and Taboola highlighted that the human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.

While 4 seconds might sound pretty insignificant, if we try to recall how many feeds we see in a continuous scroll in just 4 seconds, it may not sound small at all. Right?

Imagine your brand message, or say your marketing ad, is one of these many feeds that your customer is scrolling through. What are the chances that they will resist the urge of their thumb to push the feeds upward, and will stop at your ad and read it wide-eyed?

WordStream says that the average CTR (click-through rate) for all display networks is 0.46%.

Yes, so, that puts the odds of a customer interacting your ad at less than 0.5%. Wow! That’s really tiny.

So, does that mean that your ad will lie in some dark corner of the marketing world, and go totally unnoticed? Not if you don’t want it to.

The sad part is that even though many people have, over the years, painstakingly researched the intricacies of customer behaviour, wrote thousands of pages of results and guidelines, and suggested the optimum ways to grab customer loyalty, most brands fail to even acknowledge these efforts. As a result, they miss out on the tricks to make their ads stand out in the crowd.

We have listed 5 reasons why your, my and everybody’s brand should adopt design as a tactic to enhance marketing and hence consumer engagement. Let’s get started!
The Literally Literary Weekly Update #8
By: Jonathan Greene
Tags: Ll Letters, Writing, Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction

Sit with Me by Agnes Louis

“Sit with me, love,”

Like a whisper of the wind,

so soft it made me wonder if I had dreamt it all.

A Love Letter To Numb Women by Jayne Stevenson (curated in Poetry)

“It hurts that we rarely see you anymore.

Whenever we do, you say —

Got to run, no time to talk.

Subtext: I can’t feel my life anymore.”

Early Days by Elizabeth Williamson

“even though they feel

so buried in the past

that you feel like another person

walking through those memories”

White Mirror by Scott Leonardi

“We all project our deepest

and most desperate selves

onto this still water,

red-eyed and impatient

to see an accurate reflection”

In the Dark by Bryony L’eau

“I did a stint in the dark

So I could recognize

The edges of light

So I could see the light that exists

In the darkest places.”

The Most Dangerous by Amy Nicolai

“Ready for the swift cut

Directly through the lifeblood of dreams

The gushing of wasted away ideas”

Protrusions by J.D. Harms

“Like running a gauntlet

pressed up against heavy thorns

& weeping”
5 Types of Content for When You’re Uninspired
By: Charles Tumiotto Jackson
Tags: Content Marketing, Startup, Marketing, Digital Marketing, Social Media

5 Types of Content for When You’re Uninspired

What if you lack time and energy to write a long blog post?

Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash

Content creation is hard. You have to be consistent, you have to deliver a ton of value, you have to publish content multiple times a day, you have to come up with new ideas all the time, you have to make sure your content is good, and you have to put out so much content in order to get noticed.

Content marketing is only efficient if you keep practicing and if you stay consistent, following a content plan.

In an ideal world, you would wake up, publish 50 pieces of content per day and deliver the best value possible, and then you would go back to sleep.

But we all know that it’s not as easy in reality and that publishing only one piece of content is already hard, demanding, and daunting.

You may say that skipping a day is fine and that you’ll be back on track the next day with even better content. And I agree with you — it’s not the end of the world to skip a day. But skipping a day makes it tempting to skip the one after that. And then the entire week. And then the month.

Here’s the truth: It’s a lot more comfortable to not put out content when you’re uninspired. But that won’t make you grow and that won’t make you learn.

But the good news is, you don’t need to publish three YouTube videos and five long blog posts per day to have an efficient content marketing strategy. As long as you deliver value, and as long as you post consistently and regularly, your content strategy will pay off and you’ll quickly see results and traffic.

Think of it this way: Every single piece of content that you post is an entry point to your profile, your website, your sales funnel, your contact page, or whatever it is that you’re trying to drive traffic toward.

So don’t skip a day, and use these other forms of content for when you’re uninspired or way too tired to write that article or film that YouTube video.
Main Types of Neural Networks and its Applications — Tutorial
By: Towards Ai Team
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Education, Innovation, Science, Technology

Main Types of Neural Networks and its Applications — Tutorial

A tutorial on the main types of neural networks and their applications to real-world challenges.

Author(s): Pratik Shukla, Roberto Iriondo

Last updated, August 11, 2020

Nowadays, there are many types of neural networks in deep learning which are used for different purposes. In this article, we will go through the most used topologies in neural networks, briefly introduce how they work, along with some of their applications to real-world challenges.

Figure 2: The perceptron: a probabilistic model for information storage and organization in the brain [3] | Source: Frank Rosenblat’s Mark I Perceptron at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory. Buffalo, New York, 1960 [4]

📚 This article is our third tutorial on neural networks, to start with our first one, check out neural networks from scratch with Python code and math in detail. 📚

Neural Network Topologies

Figure 3: Representation of the perceptron (p).

1. Perceptron (P):

The perceptron model is also known as a single-layer neural network. This neural net contains only two layers:

Input Layer

Output Layer

In this type of neural network, there are no hidden layers. It takes an input and calculates the weighted input for each node. Afterward, it uses an activation function (mostly a sigmoid function) for classification purposes.

Applications:
Babylon.js TypeScript Project Setup for the Impatient
By: Sean Zhai
Tags: Programming, Game Development, Visualization, Typescript, Babylonjs

Photo by Jusdevoyage on Unsplash

Quick Start

It requires some proper setup to start a babylon.js project in TypeScript. The easy way is to clone a template from GitHub. I made one here:

After unzip and name it as you like, open the folder with VS Code. Run the following under Terminal.

npm install

npm run build

npm run watch

You can right-click on index.html to Open with Live Server, and start coding and testing. TypeScript will rebuild automatically when you save the file.

This is really what you need to start a TypeScript project in Babylon JS. I highly recommend TypeScript, as you can have a much better experience in comparison with JavaScript.

If you are curious about how exact a TypeScript project is set up, you can continue reading the rest of the article.

Behind the Scene

Project Setup

You should have npm set up already. If not, go to the official site to install it.

Create a folder for the project. Open the folder with Visual Studio Code.

In Code, [Terminal] -> [New Terminal]

npm init

npm install --save-dev typescript webpack ts-loader webpack-cli

npm install --save babylonjs@preview babylonjs-loaders@preview babylonjs-gui@preview

Create a file called webpack.config.js

Create tsconfig.json

The file of package.json is generated automatically by npm. Add 2 lines under scripts.

"scripts": {

"build": "webpack",

"watch": "webpack -w",

"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"

},

Writing index.html and Typescript code

A very basic index.html.

Create a folder called src for typescript programs. This is where you do actual coding. Create a file called app.ts under this folder. (This is defined under entry section in webpack.config.js)

You can write your scene under app.ts.

To build

npm run build

To automate the process of building, you can do

npm run watch

To see the result, open index.html with a local server.

Voila. Enjoy Babylon JS and TypeScript.
You Always Deserve a $6 Cup of Coffee
By: Ryan Porter
Tags: Happiness, Food, Ideas, Psychology, Productivity

You Always Deserve a $6 Cup of Coffee

You hold the key to happiness in your hand.

Photo by Fahmi Fakhrudin on Unsplash

I took on an internship at a tech startup during my senior year of college.

I didn’t have any business working at a tech company, but I needed to log 120 internship hours to graduate. What a deal right?

I interviewed in a building about 20 minutes from campus, and in my haste, I accepted the position on the spot.

For 13 weeks, I got a taste of the post-grad work life. And like a real working adult, I was always rushing to get to work on time.

I wasn’t as put together as I am now.

Most days during my commute, I noticed the most absurd drive-thru line at the Starbucks next to the office.

“Why don’t these people make their coffee at home,” I thought as I pulled into the parking lot just shy of on time.

I didn’t understand how people had time to wait in line for 15–20 minutes for a cup of coffee when they could save time, and money, by brewing it at home.

I thought like this, until I became a 9–5 workday zombie myself.

Now, I appreciate the experience of walking to another location for a coffee that’s only slightly better than the one I make at home. It’s not about the coffee but what it does for you.

It’s the little things that make a big difference.
How a “Worry Window” Can Stop Your Nagging Anxiety
By: Todd Lincoln
Tags: Life Lessons, Mental Health, Self Improvement, Life, Psychology

When I was six years old, I got a vaccination shot during my annual check-up. It was terrifying and it hurt like hell.

During my visit, the doctor mentioned that I would get another booster shot when I turned 11. Given the pain and stress I had just gone through, I circled my 11th birthday in my mental calendar and began to dread its inevitable arrival.

Over the next five years, I worried about that booster shot a lot.

Sometimes, as I fell asleep at night, the thought of the needle would pop into my head and I’d jolt awake. And every time I visited a doctor, I feared they were going to surprise me with the vaccine.

When the dreaded day finally arrived, I was deeply unsettled. I worried all week leading up to the appointment, fidgeted nervously in the waiting room, and trembled as the nurse wiped alcohol on my shoulder and uncapped the shiny needle. When she finally injected me, it burned like a hornet sting from skin to bone. It was every bit as bad as I had imagined.

Fast forward 25+ years and I’ve outgrown my fear of shots. However, now I’m afraid of the dentist. Last month I was dreading an upcoming dentist appointment and it reminded me of that childhood booster shot.

Suddenly, a thought dawned on me:

I wonder how much pain and stress I suffered from worrying about the shot vs. actually getting the shot?

If you could add up all the physical and emotional pain from dreading the shot vs. getting the shot, what would that look like?

Dreading the shot: Many hours of worry and stress. Many restless nights. Anxiety at every doctor’s visit. Internal panic before the injection.

Many hours of worry and stress. Many restless nights. Anxiety at every doctor’s visit. Internal panic before the injection. Getting the shot: A few seconds of sharp pain. Some lingering soreness for a day or two afterwards.

As I reflected, I realized something profound: The total cumulative pain from dreading the shot was probably 100x greater than the actual pain of getting the shot.

If you were to compare the two in a graph, it might look like this:

As I thought back, it became clear that I had created most of my pain and suffering, not the shot.
The Writer. My Writer.
By: Lita Tiara
Tags: This Happened To Me, Nonfiction, Writing, Self Improvement, Self Love

She was driven, full of ambition. Writing new pieces overnight wasn’t adequate to describe her remarkable capabilities. She has her way to touch people. To reach lonesome souls like no one else can to tell them that everything will be okay.

Yet somehow, she didn’t want to be a writer for a living. To her, writing is the most pleasurable form of panacea that she can take any time. She doesn’t want to trade her most idyllic utopia for money. She is gifted, but she doesn’t believe that she’s able enough to sell, at least for now. If she ever decides to publish, she will do it so her children will be inspired by the things that she’s capable of doing when she was young and no more.

Though, there is one thing I wish I can say to her; the one thing that bothered me the most. My dear, if you’re reading this, No. It’s not for your lack of knowledge in fat, flamboyant words that you always think would capture the eyes of the book devotees. It’s not for your constant grammatical errors or misspellings, either.

It is, in fact, the way you let the thing you loved most consume you into thinking that you will never be good enough to be loved. My dear, if only you knew you have the ones who love you so dearly. If only you’d be willing to stop your search for the loves you never need, you would have your heart be filled to the brim by ours. If only you would stop looking around the world, back and forth for such admiration, you’d finally be grateful that you can find them so close to you.

You were always the sensational anomaly, with writings that would forever leave us marveling at your potential. The world may not be yours to grasp just yet, my dear. For now, we’ll be your world and you’ll be ours.

It was never your burden to keep everyone elated.
Dear writers, are you unsure where to publish your writing?
By: Aj Krow
Tags: Ideas, Writing, Advice, Productivity, Writing Tips

Dear writers, are you unsure where to publish your writing? Try using toppub.xyz! This website is a source where you can find the top publications. It provides you with information on what tags they use for their articles. It also provides a brief description of their philosophy, and their number of followers. For example, if you are looking for a publication to submit your fiction writing, go to toppub.xyz. On the right, find the section called Popular tags. From there, you can see what’s trending, or click on See all. Find the fiction tag and browse through the publications to view what type of fiction writing they accept. Remember, don’t submit a piece just because there’s a high number of followers. Your goal should be a higher number of reads, so submit it to a pub that fits with the appropriate genre!

Photo by matthew Feeney on Unsplash
Why Camels Have Humps
By: Sam Westreich
Tags: Nature, Evolution, Animals, Environment, Science

A popular saying that’s been around since the 1960s says that “a camel is a horse designed by a committee.”

It’s a saying that’s supposed to be critical of committees, suggesting that they are ineffective and lead to poor, conflicting eventual decisions. But despite the initial impression that a camel may lead on a person, these creatures are superbly designed and completely optimized for their environment.

There’s no denying that they do look rather weird, at first glance. They’ve got wide, flat feet that look like they’ve been stung by bees. They have long eyelashes that make them look like a failed beauty competition contestant. They’re often considered to be foul-tempered, stubborn, and irritable. And that’s not even addressing that big ol’ hump that sticks up from the middle of their backs.

Let’s dig deeper into some of these camel oddities. Why the lashes? Why the flat feet? And what’s in that hump — is it filled with water, or is there another purpose for the bulge?

Unlike many committees, a camel is ideally suited for its purpose. Let’s learn about their physiological tools.

Camels Never Need False Eyelashes

I’ve never really fallen for a girl because of her long, seductive eyelashes, but I’m sure that plenty of beauty gurus, if they saw the eyelashes of a camel, would feel a bit of envy.

Gorgeous, darling, just gorgeous. Ready for the runway. Source.

But unlike the models that walk the runways in fashion shows, camels have their long lashes out of necessity. Camels have lots of eye protection; they have three eyelids, not just the two that we do, and they have two sets of eyelashes.

(By the way, the two eyelids we have are the upper and lower eyelid, in case you’re curious!)

The third eyelid that camels have is called a nictitating membrane, and it sweeps across from the inner corner of the eye. It is transparent, so it’s not obvious to spot when first looking at a camel, but it helps to protect the eye. It shields against dust and sand, which is a big issue in the desert where camels spend most of their time.

There’s also a theory that this nictitating membrane may help block some ultraviolet light, helping to reduce some of the glare that occurs in the bright, sunny desert.

Similarly to the nictitating membrane, the long lashes on camels help to keep their eyes shielded from blowing sand and dust, and also reduce glare and the amount of light that enters their eyes in the sunny desert.
Long Live The Storytellers
By: Mark Starlin
Tags: Writing, Reading, Writer, Essay, Storytelling

Before the rise in literacy and the invention of the printing press, people told stories. To family, to friends, around the table, around a campfire, at the pub. If you were good at it, not many people knew. Did it matter? Of course not. If you liked telling stories you told them. If other people liked listening to them they listened.

Over time storytellers became writers. Stories started living in books.

As a writer, I am “known” by a few hundred people on Medium. Probably 20% of them actually read my stories regularly (based on claps and responses.) Does it matter? Of course not. The world (or Medium) doesn’t owe me a huge audience or fame or fortune. And thankfully, I am not chasing after them. God bless those who are. It is a difficult road to travel.

Of course, we all want an audience. Someone to appreciate our creative output. Audiences are good. No matter the size. They help us grow. The feedback they provide is essential. You learn what works and what doesn’t. You receive criticism, encouragement, and instructive silence. All of which are helpful.

And if you write something readers like it is very satisfying.

I write mainly humor and fiction. Topics not highly valued by Medium, but highly valued by some writers on Medium. And by some readers of Medium. So I write for them. If people like to read what I write they read it. And sometimes they respond. It’s like telling stories to friends.

I am fortunate that I can write for the pure joy of creativity and the pleasure of a small audience that enjoys what I write. Not because I am rich. By no means. I appreciate the small amount of money I make on Medium. It covers my internet, my Medium subscription, and Netflix. But writing on Medium is just one of my gigs. My main income comes from teaching guitar and playing occasional band gigs. My wife also works. Together we make enough to live simply. It is good. And it allows me to write. To tell stories.

I am a storyteller.

Long live the storytellers.
Predict House Prices with Machine Learning
By: Col Jung
Tags: Real Estate, Artificial Intelligence, Python, Data Science, Machine Learning

Predict House Prices with Machine Learning

Regression model trained on 1,883 homes

Image source: Greg Carter Barrister & Solicitor.

Property valuation is an imprecise science. Individual appraisers and valuers bring their own experience, metrics and skills to a job. Consistency is difficult, with UK and Australian-based studies suggesting valuations between two professionals can differ by up to 40%. Crikey!

Perhaps a well-trained machine could perform this task in place of a human, with greater consistency and accuracy.

Let’s prototype this idea and train some ML models using data about a house’s features, costs and neighbourhood profile to predict its value. Our target variable — property price — is numerical, hence the ML task is regression. (For a categorical target, the task becomes classification.)

We’ll use a dataset from elitedatascience.com that simulates a portfolio of 1,883 properties belonging to a real-estate investment trust (REIT). There are 26 columns. Here’s a small snippet:
Sorry Buddy — Your Brain is Not Your Friend!
By: Argumentative Penguin
Tags: Work, Evolution, Life, Psychology, Productivity

Your brain is working against you. Fact. There’s a perfect evolutionary storm and it’s killing your productivity. Do you want to achieve your goals? Fine. But understanding why your brain behaves the way it does is the first step on the road to self-empowerment.

First of all, you must accept this one simple thing

Your brain screws you over. Every single day. If we were in a friendship with our brains we would’ve binned them off years ago. We wouldn’t tolerate their constant whining, negative talk, and undermining.

There are two underlying psychological predispositions I want to tell you about. We all have them to a greater or lesser degree. If they’re left unchecked and unmonitored, they will derail us. They can affect our motivation and throw us off our goals and our best-laid plans.

Everything Is Awful and here’s why…

I’m kidding. I’m having a great time writing this article. But your brain doesn’t think so. The wiring in our brains views the world with a strong negativity bias. It has to. Evolution left us with no choice in the matter.

When faced with an uncertain situation, the chimps that ran for cover were the ones that survived. Sure, that looming shape could’ve been Grandma with wooly mammoth for dinner. But it could’ve been a nasty dinosaur.

I’m kidding. There were no dinosaurs. Huge bears though. Lions. Tigers. Rhino. Massive apex predators that wouldn’t think twice about chomping on our ancestors. Those with a pessimistic inclination and nearby hiding places were the ones that made it. Your Great-Grandparents eighty times removed might’ve been skittish as hell, but they survived.

Good Hominids hid at the first sign of trouble.

But that leaves modern humans threat-focused. In any given situation we find ourselves we seek to end the threat. It’s a good trait to have. It kept the species safe. It’s unlikely a lion is going to jump out at you from behind the photocopier though. You’re not going to get trampled by Wildebeest on your way to the pub.

So you’re safe. Sounds too good to be true. Your brain thinks so.

So it does the best thing it can. It invents threats and problems for you to solve. The time you spend in the office is often spent fixing problems. We focus on what we’ve done wrong. We see other people as competitors. We focus on the threats to our business and our finances.

A lot of our time is now spent in our frontal cortex inventing problems that we may never have to face. We ruminate on the impossible, the unpredictable and the never-going-to-happen. If we do this long enough we shorten our lives. If we do this at a professional standard we will get diagnosed with anxiety.

Your brain doesn’t mind. You didn’t get eaten. That’s what counts. Your brain fixates on negatives because positives aren’t a threat. None of your ancestors died from aggressive piles of fruit. Evolution has done its job. It got you and your genes into the digital age.

You’re hard wired to see threats where threats don’t exist.

PROBLEM NUMBER ONE: you always focus on the negative.
[Chapter-1] Instance-Based Versus Model-Based Learning 🧙🏻‍♂️
By: Vishvdeep Dasadiya
Tags: Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Datascience Training, Python, Artificial Intelligence

One more way to categorize Machine Learning systems is by how they generalize. Most Machine Learning tasks are about making predictions. This means given a number of training examples, the system needs to be able to generalize to examples it has never seen before. Having a good performance measure on the training data is good, but insufficient; the true goal should to perform good on new instance (new data).

Instance -based Learning 🤖

Instance-based Learning

Possible the most trivial from of learning is simply to learn by heart. If you were to create a spam filter this way, it would just flag all emails that are identical to emails that have already been flagged by users not the worst solution but to the best.

Instead of just flagging emails that are identical to known spam emails, your spam filter cloud be programmed to also flag emails 📧 that are very similar to known spam emails.

A very basic similarity measure between two emails cloud be to count the number of words they have in common. The system would flag an email as spam if it has many words in common with a known spam email 📧.

The system learns the example by heart, then generalizes to new cases by comparing them to the learned examples, using a similarity measure. As in picture we can see that the new instance would be classified as a tringle because the majority of the most similar instances belong to that class.

Model-based Learning 🧭

Model-based Learning

“From a set of examples is to build a model of these examples, then use that to make predictions this is called model-based learning”

For example, suppose you want to know that if money makes people happy in higher GDP rate countries or medio care GRP rate countries.

Visualized Data

As we can see, there does seems to be a trend here! Although the data is noisy, It looks like life satisfaction up more or less linearly as the country’s GDP per capita increases. So we can chose linear model, this process is known as Model Selection. We will learn more about how to chose model based on statistic result, but now is not the time remember we will take care of the process and result (achievement) will take care itself 😉.
Top List of Quick Pandas Methods
By: Michelangiolo Mazzeschi
Tags: Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Pandas, Data Science, Machine Learning

Let me begin by creating a dataset that I will edit in many different ways

df = [

['001', 101, 2000, 'red'],

['002', 99, 2080, 'blue'],

['003', 94, 1980, 'yellow'],

['004', 107, 2020, 'red'],

]

df import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame(df)

df

Editing Column Headings

Unfortunately, the columns are simply stored as 0, 1, 2, 3. In order to edit the headings, I will use the following line of code:

df.columns = ['id', 'radius', 'weight', 'color']

I am passing the columns as a list to change the headings.

Adding index

By default, the DataFrame has a numerical index. However, you might want to change it according to your needs.

df.index = df['id']

df.pop('id')

df

One very common practical application where you might want to use indexes are time-series. When training LSTM neural networks, you have to drop the time stamp of the dataset. However, instead of dropping it, you can add it as an index.

Editing the entire Dataset

This is in absolute my favorite function. With an apply and lambda function, I can edit all the information in the dataset according to my instructions.

For example, I want to add twice the value of weights to the radius column.

df['radius'] = df['weight'].apply(lambda x : x+df['radius'])

df

Deleting n row

df = df.drop(df.index[[0]])

df

Transforming Series into DataFrame

What it may seem like an impractical use of Pandas its automatic setting of transforming one column into a Series.

row = df['radius']

row

Now, all the settings and methods I could have applied to a DataFrame are not valid, because it is essentially behaving like a NumPy Array.

row = pd.DataFrame(df['radius'])

row

As you can see, you can convert a single column (Series) back into a DataFrame.

Making a copy of the dataset

One wrong assumption you can make is that by defining another variable you can simply copy the dataset:

a = df

a

I will no modify an element of a:

a['color'][0] = 'black'

a

However, if we look at df, that WE HAVE NOT EDITED DIRECTLY:

df

We can see that both dataset have been modified. This is because Pandas works by assigning references to new variables.

To solve this problem:

a = df.copy()

If we perform the same experiment, you will see that only will be modified.

Only maintaining rows with a certain value

Let me now assume that I only want to conserve the rows which have a weight value higher than 2000.
Get My New Book On Amazon
By: Tom Belskie
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, Horror, Writing, Books

I’m happy to announce that my debut work, The Woods Are Dark & Full Of Terrors (A Collection Of Short Horror Stories) is live on Amazon and available for purchase in eBook format through the Kindle store (just $2.99). Kindle Unlimited members can borrow and read free of charge.

If you don’t have a Kindle, fear not, you can read via the Kindle app or on a regular computer with the Cloud Reader.

Please consider purchasing a copy, your support would mean the world to me as a new author trying to make his way in the independent publishing world. Every sale and review matters so if you can spare the three dollars, I would be eternally grateful.

Click here to purchase.

Thank you in advance for your support.

Sincerely,

Tom
Lesson Learned:
By: Krystopher, Dash
Tags: Self-awareness, Personal Development, Personal Growth, Entrepreneurship

Lesson Learned:

Take care of YOURself. Work for YOURself.

Life is too short for frustrations. Work on being proactive instead of reactive, it helps with stress.

Work life balance is very important.

Plug: Episode 3 of #IGOTASTORYTOTELL Podcast coming soon. This next individual is perfect, and will have you laughing every moment.

B.O.B. is going to continue to deliver amazing content for minority entrepreneurs.
How I Make Imposter Syndrome My Superpower
By: Mel De Leon
Tags: Programming, Women In Tech, Startup, Mental Health, Work

How I Make Imposter Syndrome My Superpower

We all deal with imposter syndrome to some extent. Here’s how I leverage it

photo by @stereo.phototyp on unsplash.

A Twitch streamer I watch, cuppcaake, recently tweeted about constantly feeling like her success was due to people pitying her. Over the past four years, I have watched her play video games, break up with her long-term boyfriend, be betrayed by her closest friend, fall in love, and build a community of people who genuinely like each other and her. I have seen her rage, cry out of sadness, laugh until she cried, and show a wide spectrum of true and genuine emotions that, to me, screams authenticity. As a long-time viewer, it was shocking to me that someone so unabashedly herself on stream almost every day would feel like a fraud.

But reading her post reminded me that imposter syndrome can lurk just beneath the surface of any person, including myself. It’s hard to take a step back and think, “I have imposter syndrome.” After all, I am a confident and decisive product manager. I have led dozens of initiatives and products, and I don’t obviously suffer from the effects of self-doubt.

I have been in tech for 12 years. For the majority of my career, I felt the need to be ten times as prepared as other people, did promotion-like jobs for more than a year before asking for a promotion, and thought I needed to be an expert in everything I did. When a developer or manager says a word I am not familiar with or explains something in a way I don’t understand, I get a panicked feeling in my chest like my whole world is about to come crashing down — as if not understanding one specific thing the moment I hear it will expose me as a fraud who completely lucked into my career.

This is most likely due to a mixture of circumstances: I am a linguistics major who chose a career path that requires a great deal of technical knowledge and acumen, I am a woman of color in an industry dominated by white males, and I was raised to internally praise myself for not being over-confident and to constantly practice humility.

Imposter syndrome, however, is a good trait/habit turned up to 11: It’s humility loud enough to blow your eardrums.

One of the reasons I learned to program was so that I could feel like the engineers I work with don’t look down on me or think I am stupid because I didn’t go to school for computer science. Despite moving up, shipping successful products, and getting positive reviews from managers for years, I still feel like I’m going to be found out as a fraud — even though I am probably one of the most knowledgeable product managers in my field.

It’s something that maybe never goes away, but I’ve found a few coping mechanisms to help deal with it.
How to Become a Better Programmer by Discovering Your Strengths
By: Jana Bergant
Tags: Personal Development, Startup, Books, Advice, Programming

BECOME A BETTER PROGRAMMER

How to Become a Better Programmer by Discovering Your Strengths

You can be a better developer by knowing yourself and leaning into your strengths

My ex-boss was a so-called natural achiever. He had a constant need for accomplishments. By the end of every day, he had to have something tangible to feel good about himself. And by “every day” I mean every single day — workdays, weekends, and vacations. A vacation was no fun for him unless he was climbing the highest mountain or doing something he could measure.

My friend Nika loves to learn. She’s drawn to the process of learning — more than the content or the result, it’s the process that’s especially exciting for her. She is energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence.

My colleague Miha likes to talk, he values relationships more than anything. Miha wants to understand other people's feelings, their goals, their fears, and their dreams; and he wants them to understand his. He is a “relator.”

What about you? You might be one of those people who like to think everything through. You might say things like, “Prove it. How can we do this? Show me that what you’re claiming is true.” It’s not that you necessarily want to destroy other people’s ideas, but you insist that their theories be sound. You see yourself as the objective one. You like data because data has no agenda. Armed with data, you search for patterns and connections.

Some of us are natural activators. Once a decision is made we must act. Others may worry that “there are still some things we don’t know,” but this doesn’t slow us down. If the decision has been made to go, we know that the fastest way to get there is to go stoplight to stoplight.

Most developers do not know what their strengths are. When you ask them, they look at you with a blank stare.

I know you’re in the quarantine right now but think of your co-workers or the people you used to work with. Have you ever worked with someone:

Who has great attention to detail and patience?

Who doesn’t solve a problem with just the code? They believe software products aren’t just the code you write, they’re much more.

With the willingness to keep learning?

Who’s a great listener and can explain concepts in a clear and simple manner?

Who loves to work in a team, who is a pleasure to work with and is adaptable?

Who writes elegant code that can be easily maintained?

A team leader who inspires and motivates their team?

Who has a constant drive to be better, to do better?

Who is super analytical and understands solutions on multiple levels? Who sees the pros and cons of every approach?

Who pushes to get the job done?

Everyone has their own strengths. One person's strength lies in strategic thinking, another excels in relationship building. Some people are natural-born influencers and others are best at executing and achieving. Finding your strengths can help you in the long run.
List of Awesome MacOS Menubar Apps 2018 👨🏻‍💻
By: Sarthak Sharma
Tags: Mac, Lifehacks, Tech, Apple, Productivity

So you liked the last list? Awesome, I have a new list of MenuBar apps for MacOS users. I know how much you guys love Menubar apps, so why not right. Best thing is, all the apps in this list are either open source or free. So let’s get started 🏃🏻‍♂️

1. Itsycal 📆

🔗 Github Link: Itsycal

This app is my personal favorite. Simple yet does everything you need to do with a calendar app. You add, edit or view any event and link it with your calendar. It’s Design is customizable. It also has a Dark theme. Btw if you are in to productivity, highly recommend you to check my latest article on morning routines

2. Katana ✂️

🔗 Github Link: Katana

Such a powerful tool but not that popular, we have Katana on our list next. If you take a lot of screenshots and your desktop is always full of screenshots check Katana out. It automatically uploads the screenshot and copies the link on your clipboard. No More Clustered Desktop.

3. CoinBar 💵

🔗 Github Link: CoinBar

Yup! Small nifty tool for tracking the price of crypto coins. It has list of all the coins and you can create your own list also. It supports 33 base currencies conversions. Also, the menu bar icon flashes when new data is available. It’s cool, check it out if you are into Crypto Currencies.

4. Dat Weather Doe 🌦

🔗 Github Link: DatWeatherDoe

This apps helps you see the current weather in your menubar. It has very cool icons, to represent current weather, that supports both dark and light theme. You can choose location by gps or zipcode. Every handy.
Litany of the Grounded
By: Joseph Coco
Tags: Mental Health, Religion, Self, Poetry, Storytelling

Litany of the Grounded

Mental health poem.

Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

Something’s Shifted

Something has changed

My mind’s broken

Addled…deranged

Where angel feathers

Once fell with grace

Is now just gray

Joy erased

Dust in the air

Churches quiet

As my mind summons

Endless riots

Broken chairs meet

Splintered wood

All for not doing

What I should

To maintain form

Not scare the world

Chalkboard on nails

As chaos unfurls

At the wicked creature

You wish not pass

Threatening to flee

Break through the glass

Slice through guards

Cut across the pale

Reeking of blood

Unleashing a wail

“I’m free of this place”

Chains now unbound

Soaring upwards

Off the ground

To the heavens I’ll fly

With no one to judge

Should I then meet God

Still I won’t budge.
7 Things I Learned During My 2 Years in an AI Startup
By: Arunn Thevapalan
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Startup, Learning, Data Science, Machine Learning

1. Be genuinely excited and let it radiate

Read that again, with the keyword being ‘genuinely.’ Everyone claims to be excited when they join a new job. But few genuinely are and continue to be. And it makes a huge difference.

As I joined the team, I started sharing the same dream and vision of the Startup. I was fascinated by how big of an impact this small team could create. I started putting in extra effort and time to learn and improve myself because I wanted to learn more and grow faster. I was genuinely excited to complement my team and solve real-world business problems using AI. And the thought of it still excites me. I had always tried hard to control my excitement, but I would fail terribly.

During these 2 years, I started handling clients, got promoted to a Machine Learning Engineer, and finally started leading the data science team's projects. I was genuinely excited about every single opportunity that came my way, and I let it radiate. I grew, and the startup grew.

So here’s my secret, if you’re joining a startup (or any organization), be genuinely excited about the work they do, and don’t hide your excitement; let it radiate because career growth is more that way. You’ll realize this sooner or later.
Life as a Writer with ADHD
By: Katy Velvet
Tags: Mental Health, Writing, Adhd, Life Lessons, Self Improvement

Life as a Writer with ADHD

If you are living with ADHD, it may be easy to dismiss the idea of writing.

Whether you have ADHD or not, I want to reiterate something: not all ADHD brains are the same — so my experience might not be the same as yours even if we share similar traits.

Managing ADHD is an ongoing process and it’s definitely not as easy as swallowing a pill. Nope, it takes work.

There are things we always have to work harder at, like improving our short-term memory retention. Sometimes we can’t even remember simple things, like whether we turned left or right.

Perhaps that sounds familiar to you, which is why you have decided to hear my experiences. Or perhaps you know somebody who has been diagnosed with ADHD. Whatever the case may be, I am delighted to share how I manage my headspace.