The quest to refine neural networks for practical applications traces its roots back to the foundational days of the field. When Rumelhart, Hinton, and Williams first demonstrated how to use the backpropagation algorithm to successfully train multi-layer neural networks that could learn complex, non-linear representations in 1986, the vast potential of these models became apparent.…

Analyzing Landsat-8 imagery (2014–2023) to create the time series of Great Salt Lake surface area using Python in Google Colab Timelapse of the Great Salt Lake area, based on cloud-free Landsat-8 images from 2014 to 2023, visualized by the author🌅 Introduction to the Great Salt Lake Shrinkage Problem 💾 Downloading Landsat-8 Images 📈 Time Series…

Blender Complete guide to create 3D experiences with large point clouds in Blender In this tutorial, I want to fill a large internet gap: how to leverage one of the best 3D tools for manipulating and visualizing massive point cloud datasets. 3D Point Cloud Visualization of an old factory within Blender. © F. PouxThis tool…

Escaping the Data Trap: How Opinions Unlock True Innovation Source: DALL-E“W e need to be data driven”, says everyone. And yes. I agree 90% of the time, but it shouldn’t be taken as a blanket statement. Like everything else in life, recognizing where it does and doesn’t apply is important. In a world obsessed with…

Developing an understanding of a variety of LLM benchmarks & scores, including an intuition of when they may be of value for your purpose 17 min read · 14 hours ago Title card created by the authorIt seems that almost on a weekly basis, a new large language model (LLM) is launched…

Hidden dangers in seeking medical advice from LLMs Image by Author. 2 sub-images generated by DALLE-2Last year, ChatGPT passed the US Medical Licensing Exam and was reported to be “more empathetic” than real doctors. ChatGPT currently has around 180 million users; if a mere 10% of them have asked ChatGPT a medical question, that’s already…

Let’s create Python data objects in a few lines of code! Image generated by the author using Gencraft.If you’re a Python coder, you’re probably familiar with Zen. Three of its 19 guideline principles state that “explicit is better than implicit,” “readability counts,” and “simple is better than complex.” When you’re creating or integrating an existing…

Exploring the path to fast nearest neighbour search with Hierarchical Navigable Small Worlds 13 min read · 19 hours ago Image created by DALL·E 2 with the prompt “A bright abstract expressionist painting of a layered network of dots connected by lines.”Hierarchical Navigable Small World (HNSW) has become popular as one of…

In this short piece, I use public Wikipedia data, Python programming, and network analysis to extract and draw up a network of Oscar-winning actors and actresses. All images were created by the author. Wikipedia, as the largest free, crowdsourced online encyclopedia, serves as a tremendously rich data source on various public domains. Many of these…

Some of the struggles I face frequently as a data scientist Photo by ThisIsEngineering from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/female-software-engineer-coding-on-computer-3861972/Ostensibly, it may seem that being a data scientist is all sunshine and rainbows (at least I think that is the perception I give from my posts!). High pay, great benefits, flexible hours, and interesting work are some things…