Publications by John Ramey
Getting Started with Some Baseball Data
With all of the discussions (hype?) regarding applied statistics, machine learning, and data science, I have been looking for a go-to source of data unrelated to my day-to-day work. I loved baseball as a kid. I love baseball now. I love baseball stats. Why not do a grown-up version of what I used to do when I spent hours staring at and memorizing...
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Conway’s Game of Life in R with ggplot2 and animation
In undergrad I had a computer science professor that piqued my interest in applied mathematics, beginning with Conway’s Game of Life. At first, the Game of Life (not the board game) appears to be quite simple — perhaps, too simple — but it has been widely explored and is useful for modeling systems over time. It has been forever since I wro...
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Listing of Statistics and Machine Learning Conferences
Occasionally, I will query Google with “statistics conferences”, “machine learning conferences” or “pattern recognition conferences” and the like. But often, it is difficult to obtain anything meaningful other than the conferences of which I’m already aware (such as JSM, ICML, some IEEE conferences). Today, I found WikiCFP, which is...
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Pseudo-Random vs. Random Numbers in R
Earlier, I found an interesting post from Bo Allen on pseudo-random vs random numbers, where the author uses a simple bitmap (heat map) to show that the rand function in PHP has a systematic pattern and compares these to truly random numbers obtained from random.org. The post’s results suggest that pseudo-randomness in PHP is faulty and, in gen...
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Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
Given that there are almost 13 million views of Steve Jobs’ commencement address, I am certain that I missed this video when it went viral. I am glad that I did not see it until now because I may not have appreciated his words of wisdom. And although there are numerous quotes that I could list, I think my favorites are closely related to a few ...
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When I was 29…
Today was my 29th birthday, and I kept things simple: I ate with my wife and my newborn son at a local eatery. Later, my wife cooked steaks for dinner. For the most part, I took the day off in that I did not work on my dissertation. But I did spent much of the day tinkering with my Octopress installation – more about that later. The best part o...
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Goals for 2012
I have never been one to set New Year’s resolutions. Personally, they instill a dangerous personal freedom that often yield naive, subconscious mentalities, such as I can do anything I want until December 31, and I will change abruptly the next day. However, my Ph.D. adviser has shown me the importance of setting goals in all things that I wish...
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And Now I Blog Again
One of my goals for 2012 has been to blog more. Much more. When I first set this goal, I had great aspirations of posting frequently. However, I had a Ph.D. to complete, and quite frankly, it demanded much higher priority. Now that I have submitted my dissertation and completed my Ph.D. requirements, I have several half-finished posts that will a...
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Now That We Live in Seattle
It has been just a few weeks since my wife, my son, and I moved to Seattle so that I could begin my postdoc at The Hutch. Now that we have been here a short time and are settled, we intend to start exploring Seattle, doing typical touristy things as well as non-touristy activities that only Seattlites would do. My wife purchased a detailed guide ...
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Textbook – Statistical Methods in Bioinformatics
As part of my effort to acquaint myself more with biology, bioinformatics, and statistical genetics, I am trying to find as many resources as I can that provide a solid foundation. For instance, I am wading through Molecular Biology of the Cell at a pace of about 10-15 pages per day – this takes nearly an hour every day. I am also going through...
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