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MidsizeBlowfish

224 karma · joined August 8, 2012

Mathematician, data scientist, teacher, dog lover

www.austinrochford.com

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MidsizeBlowfish··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2017)
Monetate Labs | Data Scientist | Conshohocken, PA (outside Philadelphia) | Full Time | ONSITE

Monetate Labs is currently looking to hire a data scientist. We are a small team (currently two) that are responsible for R&D on machine learning products at Monetate. We shepherd machine learning products through ideation, feasibility research, and development.

Data Scientist: http://monetate.applytojob.com/apply/ubNfk0jm3Q/Data-Scienti...

MidsizeBlowfish··on The Sigmoid Function in Logistic Regression
Ah, right you are! Thanks for correcting my mistake :)
MidsizeBlowfish··on The Sigmoid Function in Logistic Regression
There is also the interesting interpretation of logistic regression as a latent choice/utility model, where unobserved variation in utility is modeled using the logistic distribution. In this interpretation, the sigmoid function arises as the CDF of the logistic distribution.

This interpretation is also nice as it shows the natural relationship between logistic and probit regression. Probit regression arises when the unobserved utility is modeled with a Gaussian distribution.

MidsizeBlowfish··on Don’t Be Scared Of Functional Programming
Eliminating side effects is about a lot more than variable scope. One example would be reading from/writing to a file.
MidsizeBlowfish··on We're Shutting Down and I'm Scared
This. She worked to accommodate your dream, have the decency to to swallow your pride for a bit.
MidsizeBlowfish··on Poll: Do you donate to charity?
I never set out specifically to donate, but every year I end up giving to pit bull rescues, local animal shelters, and Oxfam.
MidsizeBlowfish··on Lessons from working 6 months on a math problem and failing
I was just about to say that this is what about four out of the six years of my math PhD have felt like. (And it's not quite done yet...May cannot get here soon enough!)
MidsizeBlowfish··on Why are there so many science PhDs?
A PhD worth getting should not involve you paying tuition. Much of the time your tuition is waived and you earn a small stipend (just enough to live frugally off of) teaching/working in a lab.

From a university's perspective, grad students are cheap labor that can eat a lot of sections of low level undergrad classes.

MidsizeBlowfish··on The Importance of Sequential Testing
Just noticed that on my iPad, will look into it.
MidsizeBlowfish··on The Importance of Sequential Testing
I'll put a follow up on some other sequential tests into my list of blog-posts-to-do and let you know when it happens.
MidsizeBlowfish··on The Importance of Sequential Testing
Haha, yes, I am the author. I do have a very formal style, an unfortunate product of too many years in grad school.

The SPRT is a nice toy test, but only useful for point hypotheses. There are generalizations to more realistic composite hypotheses, though.

MidsizeBlowfish··on Take $1,000, Trade Once a Day, Make $264 Billion—You Could Have Done It in 2013
In addition to the preposterousness of investing more than a company's market cap, I'd be interested in seeing this strategy backtested. Lots of random crap works over short time scales.
MidsizeBlowfish··on So You Think You Have a Power Law
This post is fantastic and the paper is fascinating. I particularly enjoyed his writing:

> This is why God, in Her wisdom and mercy, gave us the bootstrap.

MidsizeBlowfish··on Ask HN: Where do you find interesting papers to read?
The http://arxiv.org/ is a pretty good source. You can get an RSS feed for whichever fields you are interested in.
MidsizeBlowfish··on Generating Functions and Fibonacci Numbers
That's great. I had never seen/considered that.
MidsizeBlowfish··on Generating Functions and Fibonacci Numbers
No problem.
MidsizeBlowfish··on Generating Functions and Fibonacci Numbers
OP here, I have actually not read TAOCP at all. It's just a derivation I sometimes use to pass a few minutes while waiting/bored and I thought I'd blog about it.
MidsizeBlowfish··on Don't use Hadoop when your data isn't that big
In the cases where I've had to use Hadoop, this was exactly what happened. We received a huge volume of data daily, which was aggregated by a nightly Hadoop job into a much more manageable amount of data for us to analyze with python/pandas.
MidsizeBlowfish··on My Most Interesting Interview Problem
Ooops, that was a typo, thanks for catching it!
MidsizeBlowfish··on My Most Interesting Interview Problem
This interview was for a data scientist position. I am also a mathematician masquerading as a programmer.
MidsizeBlowfish··on My Most Interesting Interview Problem
Certainly. This interview was for a data-oriented position.
MidsizeBlowfish··on My Most Interesting Interview Problem
Poster here, I actually had considered adding both of these methods to the end of the post, but decided to keep it focused on the problem itself.

edit

Maybe I'll write about them in a follow-up post.