shahinrostami

Kids coding series (https://piduck.com)

The groundwork is done - taking a break before getting something released!

From this month I've decided to see if I can work on my personal projects full time... these include the books I've self-published through http://datacrayon.com/shop/, but now I wonder if it's worth while getting any of them into print...

We highlighted something similar in the multi-objective optimisation literature [1]. Unfortunately, it looks like comparing benchmark scores between papers can be unreliable.

- _Algorithm A_ implemented by _Researcher A_ performs different to _Algorithm A_ implemented by _Researcher B_.

- _Algorithm A_ outperforms _Algorithm B_ in _Researcher A's_ study.

- _Algorithm B_ outperforms _Algorithm A_ in _Researcher B's_ study.

That's a simple case... and it can come down to many different factors which are often omitted in the publication. It can drive PhD students mad as they try to reproduce results and understand why theirs don't match!

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42979-020-00265-1

I enjoy literate programming so Evcxr has made learning Rust a familiar experience.

The data science ecosystem isn’t quite there yet, but you can still do some things easily if you want to.

If you’re interested, you may want to check out my book on the topic https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/data-analysis-with-rust-...

I quite like this comic, it offers some perspective http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

Stumbled upon this whilst trying to publish an update to a theme I maintain:

  npm ERR! code E404

I have no idea why it removed the link... it was a link to an image displaying an email inbox with many customer order emails, i.e. many sales being made.

Thank you for the great suggestion - I've already updated the page to add "Lifetime Access"!

Fixing the Paypal button issue will be more tricky! I just tried it in Firefox and it's fine, but I'm seeing temperamental issues in Safari. Will look into it further - thanks for the heads up.

Very nice work! I've written a small API (https://m8.fyi/chord) to generate beautiful diagrams easily and quickly from Python. It's definitely not making a living from the income, but it is enough for a coffee every now and then.

Thanks for sharing! Through your link, I found my way to this image. It reminded me of the time I thought I had a similar inbox indicating a successful launch, but it was just the same person's "payment failed" notification coming through!

We can say... slow and steady! I can go days without a sale, and most of the time it requires active promotion. I list them directly (https://store.shahinrostami.com/) and not through Amazon/Gumroad etc, so maybe that makes it more difficult... but I'm still enjoying it!

Thank you for sharing this - it was an interesting read. Would be interested to see how the book does if you end up sharing something similar a few months from now. I've released a few technical e-books this year to adapt to the lockdown situation - so it's nice to read on similar journeys.

Nice - I've done the same with Data Analysis with Rust Notebooks here: https://shahinrostami.com/posts/programming/rust-notebooks/p...

Sorry, lacking sleep and wasn't clear! I didn't mean an industry-sponsored PhD - I meant a fully funded PhD, e.g.:

  These add a non-repayable, tax-free maintenance grant known as a 'stipend'. In 2018/19 this is worth a minimum of £14,777 and it can be used towards living costs. https://www.prospects.ac.uk/postgraduate-study/phd-study/phd-studentships

No real research experience until the PhD programme. I did run a blog where I posted about papers I found interesting in the domain, but I hadn't published!

1. UK university academic (on sabbatical, consulting and adapting!)

2. Wanted to try something different... last software engineer post was 2010. I became very interested in Evolutionary Computation, so I went for a sponsored PhD position.

Good idea - I'll get a sample chapter on there!

Thank you :) do you have any ideas on how I can make it more friendly (less complicated)?

Indeed I did :) but still useful to have the links for other interested readers!

Interesting tool - I tried pasting in your comment and it seems like the word "style" is not permitted!

  Uh oh! You have used a non-permitted word (style)`

Gave it a go - looks great https://codepen.io/StamiLabs/pen/wvMRpwp

Very cool! Would be great as a WooCommerce plugin, I would love to use it for the books on here https://store.shahinrostami.com/

I didn't even realise it wasn't open source anymore! But it is indeed up to them! Perhaps they have something planned

Big fan of Notable, thought I'd share it!

Found out about this when publishing through cargo:

    error: api errors (status 401 Unauthorized): The given API token does not match the format used by crates.io.

    Tokens generated before 2020-07-14 were generated with an insecure random number generator, and have been revoked. You can generate a new token at https://crates.io/me.

    For more information please see https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/07/14/crates-io-security-advisory.html. We apologize for any inconvenience.

w.r.t. b), it looks like you can figure out which were legitimate sites using the "Insight" column!

It depends on the nature of the problem! Are you able to share any specifics e.g. context, number and relationship between decision variables, number of objectives (single or multi?), the optimisation operators in use, and so on?

My main use of dimensionality reduction is to improve visualisation to support decision making. I've seen PCA and differential evolution approaches in the decision space to show promising results on benchmarks.

Ah I see! Let's go with Patreon then :) As it grows I think it will allow for better engagement from supporters. Plenty of features for sharing updates and getting feedback that are perhaps worth the cut they take!

Thank you for spotting that and letting me know, I'll fix it now!

I'm glad you like it! I'm trying out both GitHub sponsors and Patreon at the moment to fund more projects, I'm not sure which will stick! So far it looks like Patreon has better support for giving back to your backers, but GitHub also doesn't take a cut. I am of course very grateful and flattered - please choose whichever you prefer!

Hello! I didn't realise this post received any attention, I thought it had faded away!

With a sufficient population size, taking advantage of better sampling techniques for initial population generation can make a significant difference. I've used LHS and modified LHS approaches before, but I wanted to keep things simple, at least in the earlier parts of the book!

Something I've worked on with a colleague recently is using a more data science with pre-optimisation exploration (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-43722-0_...), hoping to do more work on this soon. With regards to high dimensionality in the search space, this kind of approach could be useful.

Previously I've been more interested in high-dimensional objective space and how to deal with them, primarily using progressive preference articulation.

If you have any requests for additional sections in the book I would love to hear them! Something high up on my list is doing a section or two on my neuroevolution algorithm, but keeping it at the right level is tricky.