Earnest Engineer

I have been caught at odds when asked about some of the key differences between Object Oriented Programming and Functional Programming. In fact I’ve felt somewhat like a fraud, in that I regularly work in both paradigms. I often keep in mind the many of the precepts of functional design in the methods of objects I am creating. So, I was looking to see what others had to say on FOOP (Functional Object Oriented Programming - or perhaps POOF “Programming Object Oriented Functionally”?) and I came across a post on Lambda the Ultimate which let me know I am not alone. This lead me on to further investigations on the questions I was pondering such as where the different types of programming work - and when they don’t. A good synopsis of this started on Stack Exchange of course... These readings exposed me to a key nub of the problem - concisely stated, which has the name of “The Expression Problem”. The expression problem is well stated in the best answer in the stack exchange po...

Now that fitness watches and armbands and other devices are commonplace, there is more progress on the development of medical grade devices which are smaller, less obtrusive and collect still more detailed information. Patches like The Holst Centers’ next generation patch ( information here )  is equipped with multiple sensing capabilities. It incorporates an accelerometer to monitor physical activity, ECG technology to record cardiac electrical activity, and is also able to track body temperature, respiratory rate, and body composition. So too should Vital Patch from Vital Connect ( information here ). These products promise to increase the health care data collected by both organizations and patients, since it will push patient monitoring to the outpatient setting. These devices can provide continuous outpatient data of a size, scope and resolution that will be well suited to big data techniques (machine learning, etc). Here’s a look at how it can be used . The hardest question...

As I am pretty sure was said, loudly and repeatedly in the movie Jerry Maguire: “Show Me The Data!” It is the Data Scientists Mantra... Data is in our name and really you need data to do your work, and we often have a singular place to store and find all our data (a data warehouse) for the work we do. But of course, the better the tools you have to easily group it, subset it, order it and otherwise transform it, the more insights you can reveal with the rest of your skills. To command all the power that the data warehouse offers and that your analytical work deserves, having a solid grip on SQL (Structured Query Language) is key. It will make your life easier, happier, and simply more wonderful. So, here are some tools to aid in that quest. Books First of all, I would like to introduce you to O’Reilly books, mostly because of 2 titles I have found repeatedly useful: SQL Pocket Guide – A Guide to SQL Usage, this slim volume helps with the details of syntax and all...

Often being in a box is a matter of point of view. Oftentimes when I'm trying to think of ideas and solutions, and I feel stuck, I remember ask myself the "who, what, where, why, when, and how" types of questions . But when I don't remember that tool for thought, I'm  lucky enough to be working with a group of people who regularly show me other ways to think "out-of-the-box" as it were. Today I was asked a question that I tried to answer for a co-worker. They were using R studio and editing an HTML table, and they needed to get some space between some columns. It was a technical issue, and my first idea, adding a non-breaking space to a collapsed column in-between the columns, didn't work. I didn't understand why it didn't work, because in other circumstances it would have worked fine. In fact, the behavior I got seemed entirely wrong and I didn't know why. I knew at worst my solution should have no effect, but that fact that it simp...

Visualization Tool: Now that we have started looking at data visualizations, it might be of interest to look at Visualizing Health . It is a tool to investigate different types of visualizations, guided by the goals for the visualization. This seems a worthwhile tool for generating ideas. Interesting Visualizations: Look at the "Transitions in Care" infographic . Partners Healthcare It is process-oriented, with time-based measurements as well as qualitative data collected within it. It’s obviously got a target audience, that is expected to pay close attention to it – it’s somewhat dense. http://www.vizhealth.org/ http://qualityandsafety.partners.org/Commitment-To-Quality/Infographics.aspx

I have been immersing myself in the world of d3js and more, specifically Plotly.js . This has required me to look at palettes, and to create some palettes - which I did with Paletton . I find it tedious, so I am creating some helpers, like the code below which displays a given list of palettes (each of which is simply an array of colors in your favorite format). <table id="Palette"> <tbody></tbody> </table> <script> var defaultColorsPalette = ["#ffd99a", "#225ea8", "#ffc09a", "#9dc4f4", "#ffbf58", "#ffdb58", "#257294", "#ff9658", "#61a1f3", "#ffa719", "#ffce19", "#ff6e19","#ffe99a", "#2a82f2", "#ff9e00", "#ffc900", "#ff5f00", "#036bf0" ]; //via colorweb2 var sequentialMultihueBlueYellowPalette = ["#ffffd9", "#edf8b1", "#c7e9b4",...

I like visualizations that expand my ideas on what a good, interactive visualization is. I particularly like those that hide additional information in plain sight, like this one does . Caffeine, Vitamin D, Green Tea, Fish Oil and a whole lot of other supplements are examined in terms of their interest (popular or scientific) vs. their evidence in interactive, graphical form. At first glance, given the title and it’s apparent simplicity, this balloon graph doesn’t seem to offer much, but it ranks items by evidence and provides links to data, so I think it’s very interesting. http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-oil-supplements/