Published in Towards Data Science·PinnedWhy Going from Implementing Q-learning to Deep Q-learning Can Be Difficult3 Questions I was Afraid to Ask (and my Tensorflow 2.0 Template) — For many people, myself included, Q-learning serves as an introduction to the world of reinforcement learning. It gets us neatly accustomed to the core ideas of states, actions and rewards in a way that is intuitive and not bogged down by complicated technical details. What makes implementing Deep Q-Learning so…Machine Learning11 min read
Published in The Startup·Oct 30, 2020The 4 Phases of Data Science Consulting ProjectsA retrospective — In some work categorization frameworks, jobs are placed into quadrants depending on whether they are routine or nonroutine, and cognitive or manual. Data science can be a rewarding and stimulating career path due to its nature as a nonroutine cognitive discipline. However, the way that demands and problems change throughout…Data Science5 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Sep 29, 2020You Should Be Using purrr for More than Just Iteration3 functions from the Tidyverse package that improve working with lists in R — The purrr package is one of the mainstays of the Tidyverse, right up there with dplyr and the pipe operator in terms of usefulness and universality. One of its main purposes is to align the intent of a loop with its syntax. Instead of involving a bunch of tedious boilerplate…R4 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Aug 31, 2020Expert Systems 2.0How neural networks are democratizing procedural knowledge — Are neural networks and deep learning the keys that will finally unlock the path to artificial general intelligence, or are we on the verge of another AI Winter? If you’re an entrepreneur, then the answer is: it doesn’t matter. Your funding doesn’t depend on grant providers being excited about your…Artificial Intelligence7 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Jul 29, 2020Improving Plotly’s Polar Bar ChartsGoing beyond the defaults to create pretty and reproducible charts — Polar Bar Charts can be great ways to display categorical information if you want to draw more attention to the categories with higher values. They were used to great effect in the Wall Street Journal’s article on Amazon’s HQ2 Shortlist. But even with the powerful visualization tools at our fingertips…Data5 min read
Jun 30, 2020Mechanical Versus Conceptual DifficultyOn finding gaps in your STEM education and enhancing your lifelong learning — It’s a tragedy whenever someone gets that degree or lands that job, and puts their days of earnest learning behind them. The truth is, we come away from our formal educations with holes in our abilities. Often, these gaps can be filled in a way that enhances how we perceive…Mathematics6 min read
Published in The Startup·May 31, 2020Stop Building Neural Networks Using Flat CodeA tf.keras Functional API code snippet — It seems that we’ve become so obsessed with building neural networks in 10 lines of code that we’ve forgotten to build neural networks in reusable lines of code. Neural networks are useful machine learning models, and they’re maturing as a technology. As a consequence of this, many things that used…Neural Networks3 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Apr 30, 2020How to Consume News More Intelligently Using Bayes’ theoremBase rates, marginal probabilities, sensitivity, and specificity — When it comes to updating beliefs and making decisions under uncertainty, Bayes’ theorem is just about the best tool available. And yet it is so often relegated to academic textbooks and machine learning applications when it should be bringing us value in our daily lives. This article is for those…Data7 min read
Published in Better Programming·Mar 3, 2020Plot 3D Functions With Matplotlib and NumPyDemonstrating meshgrid, vectorize, and other useful tools — Math is beautiful, and the software we have at our fingertips represents an invaluable way to explore that beauty. Never before have we been able to visualize and experiment with mathematical objects in such an accessible way. Today, I’d like to break down the steps required to plot a function…Programming5 min read
Published in Ascent Publication·Feb 20, 2020How to Do More by Demanding LessAn intelligent framework for setting small goals — If you’re reading this, chances are that you already know what you need to do in order to improve your life. You’re familiar with more than a couple life hacks at this point, and you know that building solid routines is important. You probably also know that it’s crucial to…Habits9 min read
