How the latest iOS update changes the economics of app development
iPhone and iPad users were met with an alert earlier this week from their devices: time to update your software! iOS 14.5 dropped from Apple on Monday with the usual list of upgrades—bug fixes, UI adjustments, performance optimizations, enhanced features—but also included was a novel change. One many users and privacy advocates have been clamoring for: robust tracking protections.
An organizational commitment to Privacy
Apple has for quite some time marketed themselves as a tech company committed to user privacy and security—a strong way to differentiate them from rivals like Google. In many aspects…
Resources for keeping your coding skills sharp
I think as a tech person I like to think the learning process can be represented by an exponential curve—getting started in a skill requires a lot of groundwork, but eventually it starts to pay off. What was difficult becomes routine, competency becomes mastery, and what once felt impossible is now right within reach. The most presumptuous part of that fairy tale is the notion that you only ever more forward. …
Python / Data Science / Modeling / Tutorial
Streamline your model optimization by combining these two powerful modules
If you’ve successfully built data models using Python and SciKit Learn, and you aren’t leveraging Pipelines and GridSearch, then I’m about to CHANGE YOUR LIFE! …Or at least that’s what I’d say if this were a clickbait article… But really, adding these two modeling objects to your code will improve readability, reproducibility, and decrease room for error in your code. Each of the modeling techniques we’re going to focus on is powerful and useful in its own rite, but when used in combination, magic happens.
First, a refresher
Before we dive into the…
Data Science / Data Analysis / Statistics
A look at how personal bias, statistical pitfalls, and intellectual dishonesty can affect data analysis
Over the past decade, powerful new tools have empowered organizations to gather and analyze data at much lower cost—enabling previously unimaginable power when it comes to predicting outcomes and behaviors. Given the availability of granular data and raw computing power accessible to us, data professionals are able to create powerful models that can predict patterns of consumption, travel, and behavior with ever-increasing accuracy. Ethical implications of this are many—far more complicated and nuanced than the scope of this article can cover. This article seeks to address the subject of honest engagement with data analysis.
Thanks to the nexus of availability…
Learning Python / Beginner / Tutorial
A beginner’s guide to Python object comprehensions and protecting your home from a Joe Pesci-type burglar
As you undoubtedly remember from my last article on the subject, list comprehensions allow for more dynamic, readable, and efficient list creation. However, there is far more to a comprehension than just putting items in a list from an existing iterable. We can make more powerful comprehensions by using conditional statements, introducing more than one dummy variable, and leveraging other Python class comprehensions like dictionary comprehensions.
On one condition…
Last time we looked at how to make a basic list comprehension. Now we’re gonna go a bit deeper. Let’s look at our example [x+5 for x in range(6)] from last time. Recall that…
“Wow, how did I end up here? I just wanted to find a simple explanation of what the heck a list comprehension is and now I’ve read 10 articles that are all incredibly complicated and I still don’t get why I shouldn’t just use a for loop.” Well, here you are, I’m gonna simply break down how to understand and formulate list comprehensions, and teach you how to garner a promotion from a fictional government agency.
Why?
You may be sitting there saying to yourself, “I understand for loops and how to make them, why waste my finite amount of time…
Joe Marx
Actor turned Data Scientist looking for applause some other way
