commit 3778f66e7bca3d99b652eb20545de5363218d4db
parent a727ff5d4677c86ba399191f980be0b5a5db911b
Author: Eamon Caddigan <eamon.caddigan@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 24 May 2025 20:19:58 -0700
Add weeknote for 2025-W21
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 64 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/posts/weeknotes/2025-w21/index.md b/content/posts/weeknotes/2025-w21/index.md
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+---
+title: "Weeknote for 2025-W21"
+description: "A bunch of stuff relevant to data scientists, actually"
+date: 2025-05-24T15:33:30-07:00
+draft: false
+categories:
+- Weeknotes
+tags:
+- Statistics
+---
+
+It’s all stats and data science for this post folks!
+
+## Weird ad-hoc analysis work vs. repeatable infrastructure work
+
+I enjoy reading how people with jobs similar to mine approach their
+work[^work], and here Au explains his workflow as a “mostly ad-hoc” data
+scientist. For example:
+
+> \[T\]here's a very strong tension between how much I leverage pre-existing
+> code and my effectiveness writing new code.
+
+My habits aren’t unlike his when I’m doing ad-hoc stuff; I’ll write “the same
+code” dozens of times and find I can approach a problem a bit better each with
+each iteration.
+
+[Randy Au---As a mostly ad-hoc'er, I've got workflow
+issues](https://www.counting-stuff.com/as-a-mostly-ad-hocer-ive-got-workflow-issues/)
+
+## A Systematic Literature Review of Undergraduate Data Science Education Research
+
+We’re “data people”, right? Surely that means there is a solid body of research
+on the best practices for inducting students into our field, from which our
+course materials are drawn? The bad news: “no, not really.”
+
+> The undergraduate data science literature that we identified often lacks
+> empirical data, research questions and reproducibility.
+
+The good news: work from folks like Dogucu can help correct this.
+
+[Mine Dogucu---We read many data science education papers so that you don’t
+have to](https://www.datapedagogy.com/posts/2025-05-17-ds-ed/ds-ed-paper)
+
+## Everything you need to know about multivariate normal sampling
+
+If you’re the sort of person who would enjoy reading a 13k word blog post
+comprising a deep dive on procedures for generating random samples from the
+multivariate normal distribution, then:
+
+1. We should be friends
+2. Have I found the blog post for _you_
+
+It’s been a while since I’ve had to think deeply about some of the technical
+topics discussed here (e.g, matrix decomposition), but Navarro does a good job
+of reminding the reader what these things are and why they’re
+relevant---without making anyone feel weird about forgetting so much stuff from
+college.
+
+[Danielle Navarro---When good pseudorandom numbers go
+bad](https://blog.djnavarro.net/posts/2025-05-18_multivariate-normal-sampling-floating-point/)
+
+[^work]: Honestly, I will listen to anybody talk about their avocations,
+ especially when they approach them as crafts. But it’s a welcome bonus when
+their experiences directly parallel mine.
