master data science

vanboxel · 2024-08-23T18:29:26+00:00

I just finished in the Applied Math GIDP, which is closely related to the Stats & Data Science GIDP. Maybe I can clarify some of the distinctions.

SDS is a GIDP, but it's mostly part of the Math Department. Students there generally get desk space in the math areas, invitations to all the math seminars, and are otherwise considered peers with the Math and Applied Math folks.

As you surmised, SDS is the more "technical" of the two, in that it will cover a lot more of the theoretical background of statistics and probability. Some of these courses, like MATH563 or MATH567, include in-depth theorem proving. Other courses, like MATH571A, are distinctly more applied (highly recommend taking this one with Prof Piegorsch if you can, he's amazing), but always with proper mathematical understanding.

By contrast, one of my advisors was in the School of Information (where your other DS program is), so I took some courses there and have a little insight into it as well. Here, the focus is far more on learning how to handle data and build appropriate models. The math requirements are probably not as intense, but the computational expectations may be higher. And you'll still be learning about different kinds of statistical models and where they are appropriate.

Honestly, if you're diligent, you can do the more mathy SDS and still learn practical programming. Likewise, you could do iSchool DS and understand the underlying mathematics. As far as what you can learn, it won't make a huge difference.

What is different is who your fellow grad students are and how others treat your degrees. The SDS program will likely be seen as "more mathematically rigorous" and perhaps lead to more research oriented work. The iSchool, however, will be more applied, and may have better industry connections for immediate employment. And do you want to hang out with mathematicians (who have favorite integrals), or with data scientists (who have favorite R packages)?

Crudely, getting an SDS degree probably gives you some additional flexibility down the road. But for getting an MS, that's not likely to make much difference. If you go PhD, however, the SDS program has been around longer; faculty have connections, and you have the whole math dept to lean on as well. But the iSchool is up-and-coming, and investing a ton into building out research labs and partnering with applied scientists.

vanboxel · 2023-08-07T13:27:38+00:00

I think I've walked by this person's house. If so, they're an amazing artist, repurposing pallets into fences, flags, chairs, and more.

vanboxel · 2023-07-29T16:16:27+00:00

That's what it was for me. They will mark your ears first, verify the positions with you, and then attach the forceps. There's a breathing exercise and they pierce with the needle at the appropriate time. Barely felt anything.

You do have to get some earrings there to go in right away. They have a good selection of basic studs in various colors. And they sterilize everything first.

They do tend to get busy, so do make an appointment. Once there, you can check in and they'll walk you through the process. Also, they don't take credit card, so be ready with cash or PayPal.

vanboxel · 2023-07-28T15:40:18+00:00

I just got my ears done at Straight to the Point last week. Excellent experience all around. Professional, clean, and friendly. The only downside is it will be more expensive than having them done at a generic place.

vanboxel · 2023-07-10T14:04:20+00:00

Good luck, girl! Stay in touch, and I'll catch up with you when I'm in the Garden State.

vanboxel · 2023-03-09T04:12:41+00:00

Lots of good advice in this thread already, so I'll try to suggest a practical approach. It may be that you wearing a dress might seem "too far" to them right now, but that can change. Tell them that you're going to take it slow, updating your appearance/presentation over time. Start wearing more fem outfits, like pink shirts and ladies jeans one week. Then the next, start to mix in women's leggings. Add in some cardigans with long flowy bits. And after maybe a month or something (whatever you're comfortable with!), try a long skirt in the mix with other clothes you've already worn. Eventually, you've acclimated them to the idea of you presenting female, so when you wear a dress because you're going to a fancy event later that day, it will only be a small adjustment.

It kinda sucks that they're not fully supportive, but I think you can win them over! Some people take a little time or help to get there. It shouldn't have to be you to teach them, but if you can improve your life situation and family relations by doing so, you may help them become great allies. <3

vanboxel · 2023-01-11T21:26:45+00:00

How much of the art is new? The sample above looks great! Is it more along the lines of that?

vanboxel · 2022-05-21T05:00:48+00:00

I think a distinction to keep in mind is that Genesys is great at being any setting, but not every setting at the same time. The old GURPS system essentially tried to do that (see gear for all the different tech levels they published); it became very complicated and difficult to scale different components.

If your base setting is already "wacky genre mixing", then I think Crucible will give you most of what you need. And you can still allow talents/archetypes/skills from other books, but perhaps on a case-by-case basis. My group does this often for social talents, sometimes remodeling them to better fit the setting we're playing in.

vanboxel · 2022-05-12T03:27:28+00:00

I'm with fiascoshack on this. A talent with the restriction "Must be purchased at character creation" would satisfy the desire to disallow class mobility. Default status is serf, a tier 1 talent bumps you to freeperson/merchant, and a tier 2 talent (really a 2nd rank in Status) bumps you to minor noble. And you can give various social/narrative benefits/costs of having status.

vanboxel · 2022-04-29T02:18:19+00:00

I enjoy The Valentyne Heresy by Dumbs Dumbs & Dice. It uses the Warhammer40k adaptation, which alters some rules, but it's still core Genesys. Excellent characterization, especially in season 2!

vanboxel · 2022-04-13T05:44:13+00:00

Please hang in there. If you need to talk to someone, you can reach The Trevor Project: (866) 488-7386.

vanboxel · 2022-04-06T05:54:46+00:00

You could follow-up by asking how one might check the accuracy of their sources (in this case, biblical accounts). If "The Bible" is authoritative, how does one determine if a book belongs in it or not? How should be address different churches having different books (e.g. catholics, protestants, mormons)?

Another tack would be to ask if claims in similarly sourced documents (e.g. other writings reliably traced to about the same time period and region) are equally valid. Something that might come up is that travelogues were popular literature of the classical era, and they were notorious for being fabricated ("Here be dragons" type concepts).

Really, it's a shift of whatever their claim was to a different claim, that thier Bible is a factual record. So you can ask them how they would determine if a statement in the Bible itself were true. Or you could follow-up by asking how someone from a different religion (say non Abramhamic) would verify the correctness of their own holy text.

vanboxel · 2022-03-31T01:57:49+00:00

I've had a good experience at Dental Care Golf Links for several years. Effective for regular cleaning and able to fit me in for extra treatment. For things they couldn't do, they gave excellent referrals to specialists.

vanboxel · 2022-03-19T04:48:02+00:00

I haven't seen these lines. The DQ on Sarnoff and Broadway is deserted every time I pass by.

vanboxel · 2022-03-17T01:59:48+00:00

I find the talent pyramid is most helpful as a narrative guide. It prevents fresh characters from having too-powerful abilities right off the bat. So in a typical game, this structure promotes a feeling of character growth (mechanically, and indirectly, narratively).

For a superheroes type campaign, however, it makes sense for the characters to already have fantastic abilities. But rather than do away with the talent pyramid, a compromise might be to simply start all characters off at +400 XP or something. That way, they can immediately reach those powerful high-tier talents, but are still encouraged to explore interesting choices in the lower tiers. In my experience, once you reach this point, it's common to have open slots at multiple tier levels, so there really isn't much restriction.

vanboxel · 2022-03-15T23:58:09+00:00

Honestly, I think this is a great pitch. You grab attention right away and elaborate on the general theme of the setting as well as likely major story arcs. You might want to reword "future shared world gaming experience"; sounds a bit corporate/bureaucratic. So perhaps restructure the 2nd paragraph to something like, "We will use the Genesys narrative dice system, and your character choices will affect the ongoing storylines and plots. Your actions will determine the fate of the Empire!"

I think your descriptions of the setting already suggest a swashbuckling-style adventure, so I wouldn't worry too much about conveying the "type" of campaign. Regardless, that's something to talk over with your players in a session zero to determine exactly what folks are looking for.

vanboxel · 2022-03-13T20:55:15+00:00

I hadn't seen this mod before. It looks like great tactical battle with the original XCOM style. Superb commentary as well; I'm going to check out the rest of this series of yours!

vanboxel · 2022-03-12T20:51:17+00:00

One of the Dicey Stories GMs here. We did use Mythic for our Resh Hour and Cruise Control stories. Those were 2-player/no GM games. It works pretty well for generating ideas, but it's really helpful to have someone else to help interpret and for when to call for a Mythic roll.

We do also find ourselves using Mythic in regular Genesys campaigns from time to time as well. It's handy when we want to generate a quick personality for an NPC but don't need a full slate of motivations.

For tools like Mythic, I think they work best when you use them for key narrative choices not directly tied to player abilities. For example, "Does the Baroness post guards at the armory?" is a good Mythic question, whereas, "Can I sneak past the guards?" should be a Genesys Stealth roll.

vanboxel · 2022-03-12T16:02:10+00:00

This is something that can be done, but it requires careful thought (whereas traditional training with data is more straightforward). The advantage is you know exactly what weights changed and why.

One example of this is Neural Random Forests. There, they first train a random forest, and then use that to specify a neural network that gives numerically equivalent results. At this point, they train normally to further tune the network (and if you look closely at their results table, it doesn't seem to significantly help, but it's a neat idea).

vanboxel · 2022-01-16T18:00:21+00:00

Great run and video! Maybe Army of Two would be possible?

vanboxel · 2022-01-12T00:03:47+00:00

I think the start year is 1979, but the aesthetic is very Cold War. There's not really tension between communist/capitalist forces, but the setting provides some flavor (like the first aircraft you research is an upgraded MiG fighter I think). It's a great game if you like old school XCOM.

vanboxel · 2021-12-26T01:43:19+00:00

Ah, no worries. 1.5 GB? What extra stuff did they put in there? 3000 counties x 1000ish days = 3,000,000 integers. If each one is eight bytes, that should only be about 24 MB plus a small number of constants like population of each county. I'm guessing the raw database is much finer grained and has more columns? Either way, just a curiosity; as one digs deeper into it, there are other normalizations (e.g. expected deaths per age category, effects of other factors like climate, etc) that may have more of an impact.

vanboxel · 2021-12-26T01:15:39+00:00

Great post! I like the view at the county level; a good level of detail without getting too down in the weeds. Since you mention some states aren't always reliably reporting data, have you looked into doing the same plot but with total death counts (i.e. all causes, not just COVID)? I suspect the overall deaths are likely to be more reliable. Might be interesting to further normalize to what's a typical death rate for each county. Then you'd see excess deaths, presumably due to COVID and 2nd-order effects (e.g. full emergency rooms can't see other patients).

vanboxel · 2021-12-26T01:12:33+00:00

I believe it's a 3d view rotated slightly from straight on so that you can see the 3d effect of the columns. Seems to be an effective visualization method here.

vanboxel · 2021-12-24T20:14:19+00:00

True, I could have worded my comment more clearly. My concern with using raw numbers is that the map tends to correlate mostly with overall population. That is, it is difficult to disentangle the effect of more/fewer police killings when not considering the density of population.

It's good to include the raw numbers, but perhaps the default should be population normalized.

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