Viewing profile — astrophysician

I work for a data science consulting company and previously in advertising, so I can say that there are (1) a number of very real problems that cannot realistically be solved _with…

In my experience I’ve never found an instance where you would use Brier scores over cross entropy/Bernoulli/Binomial log likelihoods. Does anybody know a concrete example when you …

Yea, some people are disappointed; some of the more interesting and exciting moments in physics are when we find out we're wrong, but not always. E.g. I will never forget the time …

From a physicists standpoint, not seeing something unexpected is not a waste at all.

I agree -- as ML becomes increasingly easy to be applied by non-experts or people without a heavy math/stats background, I've seen an increasing volume of arguments against the dat…

> The link says: "We’re still learning how well COVID-19 vaccines keep people from spreading the disease", so don't make authoritative statements about post-vaccination spread unle…

I agree: in retrospect, in todays context, those statements are not good public health policy. And saying "they are not effective in preventing general public from catching coronav…

> You say this as if it's a fact, but as of 2 days ago, we still don't know the answer to that question. Unless you have a source I'm unaware of? https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/20…

I mean I see the point, I think their comments made a lot more sense in the context of where things were back then, and they didn't consider how they would be viewed after the init…

You should wear masks in public when you are vaccinated because while you're protected from severe symptoms, you can still carry the virus and transmit it to others. > The ultra ri…

Yea but....he's right? What is the controversy here? There was a huge concern about supply shortages and people hoarding PPE. Masks are the best thing the public can do at this poi…

Simply not true, starlink will have a real impact on research (see e.g. https://www.lsst.org/content/lsst-statement-regarding-increa... for the impact on LSST) and will make some s…

I agree and have been doing some similar analysis on the backblaze dataset. I suppose you can use this for prediction but I'm personally just interested in post-hoc analysis and (1…

Unfortunately not my experience -- went to nearest ER for sudden and agonizing abdominal pain, got some basic pain meds, got a CAT scan to diagnose pneumonia, was sent home within …

I'm guessing just venting personal frustrations due to their own experiences, plus maybe poor hiring and guidance of data scientists in their own teams? I have definitely seen DS p…

Just want to say that while the data science profession definitely includes a wide range of people and skillsets, a good data scientist should be practical and able to work with th…

> I think you're missing the central point, which is that computation is observer relative. Anything can be interpreted as a computational process. I see what you're saying, and ma…

> I don't think you can say that life is built on computational processes unless you use a definition of "computation" that is so vague and all-encompassing that it becomes effecti…

> The burden of proof is on those claiming minds and computers are the same thing. I never understand this argument. IMHO the rest of your argument seems to obfuscate something rat…

because tolerating flu deaths doesn't completely overwhelm healthcare systems?

In my opinion there aren't many deep learning applications that are fundamentally snake-oil, it's more that people who don't quite understand the limitations and advantages of part…

Just to clarify: prophet implements a particular model with Stan as a backend, not Stan models generally.

As the recipient of a $25,000 bill for an emergency visit to an out-of-network hospital that I have been fighting for two years (still ongoing), this is such an overdue blessing. F…

Unfortunately right now its `localhost` but once I finish a couple of posts (tomorrow? a year from now?) I'll put it online. Thanks for asking though :)

As another former astrophysicist-turned-datascientist (though with only 2 years after the transition instead of Marcel's 7), this hits close to home, but my experience in both worl…