Here’s a neat approach to teaching kernel learning (for empirical risk minimization), following section 2.2.6 of the book “First-order and Stochastic Optimization Methods for Machine Learning” by Guanghui Lan. Given the terse nature of this book, I did not expect to find such a straightforward pedagogical approach that I’ve not seen elsewhere. Let’s begin by … Continue reading Teaching kernel learning
Bruh! I’ve been away for five years. Only posting now because I’m productively procrastinating (yes that is a lifehack link, don’t judge me) working on a grant whose writing is going to be like pulling nails. This blog was supposed to serve as a journal (as much of a journal as something public facing can … Continue reading Every deep learning paper is wrong. Don’t at me. — seen in the bowels of Twitter
How does this not have more views (listens, really)?
It’s ridiculously over spaced by default, and in addition to correcting this, you may want to reduce the font size to get that extra half page you desperately need to eke out to meet the page limit. To accomplish these two goals, put the following in your preamble: \renewcommand{\IEEEbibitemsep}{0pt plus 2pt} \makeatletter \IEEEtriggercmd{\reset@font\normalfont\footnotesize} \makeatother \IEEEtriggeratref{1} … Continue reading How to make the IEEEtran bibliography font smaller
I just spent several disappointing minutes on Amazon checking out two books by Pinker and Harris recommended on one of the atheist podcasts I follow, both with theses relating to the development of morals. Unsurpisingly, I found a scathing review of Harris’s book— full disclosure: I *really* *really* don’t like the guy, ever since I … Continue reading Morals, smorals
Here are some pretty pictures of empirical orthogonal functions (principal components in climatology jargon) calculated for the 3D field of ocean temperatures using data collected over 32 years, generated by computing a rank 20 PCA of a 2 Tb matrix. I’ve been doing a lot of programming recently, implementing truncated SVDs in Spark on large … Continue reading Spark for Linear Algebra: don’t
YARN does not seem to be configured correctly when you use the spark-ec2 script to install a Spark cluster on EC2. Here’s my short workaround for getting YARN to work (with a simple python script at the bottom): launch a cluster with e.g. spark-ec2 -k <keyname> -i <keyfile> -s –instance-type=<type> –placementgroup=<placementgroupname> –hadoop-major-version=2 –copy-aws-credentials launch <clustername> … Continue reading Installing Spark with Hadoop 2 using spark-ec2
The Confederate flag is literally a symbol of treason. Not only that, but the most treasonous act in the entire history of the United States. Anyone who buys into the ‘States Rights’ explanation for the Secession either doesn’t understand what rights we’re talking about, or doesn’t care: the right to slavery. Elide motivations all you … Continue reading My thoughts on the confederate flag
Just finished season 9 of Supernatural. You’ve got to give that show credit for being one of the few that *demands* a deus ex machina ending. Anything less, after all this fighting over who’s going to take God’s place and Castiel’s moments of mysterious grace, would be a let down. I can’t wait to see … Continue reading A quick thought on Supernatural and some other tv shows
I finally got around to watching Marco Polo. This is perhaps surprising news, as anyone who knows me could guess this would be right up my alley: almost superhuman martial arts (at least in the promo material), an eastern setting, and a clash of nations … I’m on episode three, and I’m suprised to say … Continue reading Marco Polo: I approve, so far