I’ve recently delivered a three-day intensive short-course on Scala for statistical computing and data science. The course seemed to go well, and the experience has convinced me that Scala should be used a lot more by statisticians and data scientists for a range of problems in statistical computing. In particular, the simplicity of writing fast … Continue reading Statistical computing with Scala free on-line course
Introduction People regularly ask me about books and other resources for getting started with Scala for statistical computing and data science. This post will focus on books, but it’s worth briefly noting that there are a number of other resources available, on-line and otherwise, that are also worth considering. I particularly like the Coursera course … Continue reading Books on Scala for statistical computing and data science
Introduction Functional programming (FP) is a programming style that emphasises the use of referentially transparent pure functions and immutable data structures. Higher order functions (HOFs) tend to be used extensively to enable a clean functional programming style. A HOF is just a function that either takes a function as an argument or returns a function. … Continue reading HOFs, closures, partial application and currying to solve the function environment problem…
For many years I’ve had a passing interest in functional programming and languages which support functional programming approaches. I’m also quite interested in MOOCs and their future role in higher education. So I recently signed up for my first on-line course, Functional Programming Principles in Scala, via Coursera. I’m around half way through the course […]
For many years I’ve had a passing interest in functional programming and languages which support functional programming approaches. I’m also quite interested in MOOCs and their future role in higher education. So I recently signed up for my first on-line course, Functional Programming Principles in Scala, via Coursera. I’m around half way through the course […]
Introduction Parallel tempering is a method for getting Metropolis-Hastings based MCMC algorithms to work better on multi-modal distributions. Although the idea has been around for more than 20 years, and works well on many problems, it still isn’t routinely used in applications. I think this is partly because relatively few people understand how it works, […]
Introduction Parallel tempering is a method for getting Metropolis-Hastings based MCMC algorithms to work better on multi-modal distributions. Although the idea has been around for more than 20 years, and works well on many problems, it still isn’t routinely used in applications. I think this is partly because relatively few people understand how it works, […]
