# Category Archives: Science

I used to be a paid scientist (Grad school, research fellowship). Speciality: Physical Chemistry. I also grew up a scientist with a scientist Dad. One of my summer jobs was doing plant tissue cloning work for/with my Dad. This was before scientists could clone animals or animal or human tissue, so it was pretty cutting edge! Anyway, since I’m a geek, I have lots of Opinions and geekeries about science.

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Just a note: I’d like to thank the freeware program, Lyx, for helping create LaTeX markup for various mathy-sciency things I post about. Very helpful. You have to know what to include/not for Jetpack’s LaTeX interpreter, Beautiful Math (most especially … Continue reading

## Statistics – This could be you! – Bayesian Conditional Probability and Medical Tests

As many of you know, I’m taking, for career change and self improvement, a certified curriculum offered by Columbia University and Microsoft and edX.org, on Data Science. With this, I hope to be able to change careers from Systems Engineering (which I love, but had become limiting) to a job in Data Analysis/Data Science, which will take me out of the Operations/Data/Server Center and into a cushy not-on-call job in a loving data haven.

## The notability of \$latex (82,000)_{10}\$

The title is meant to read $(82,000)_{10}$, but WordPress’s Jetpack Plugin’s Beautiful Math component doesn’t execute latex markup in the Title/Subject. I’m still keeping it in the subject, though.

This post is about bases and numbers and elitism and of course, math and meta discussion. If you are interested, please read on!

## Visual Rhetoric – Some feedback for MSNBC

Over the years, MSNBC has been using and reusing a particular visual rhetorical style for presenting job growth numbers since Obama’s taken office. And it’s not bad for presenting good data consistently over time, for keeping the range of values within a reasonable scale. All good things, but what it lacks is punch.

## Measuring and Calibration – Science Geek Series

A lot of bakers and chefs and chemists will tell you that they’re in the same business. So, in a way, are bartenders and cheese makers and drug dealers and brewers and vintners. Because we all need to measure things a lot and we need both accuracy (the ability to measure amounts reliably) and precision (the ability to consistently measure the same amounts).

When you get right down to it, precise, accurate measurement is terribly difficult to carry out, and it’s critical to turning out a consistent product or sale every single time.