Back to Blogging

If you’re subscribed to this blog, you’ve surely noticed the very long hiatus I’ve taken from writing over the last six months. I wish I’d kept up with blogging more faithfully this year, but, in my defense, I’ve been busy doing a few big things:

1. I wrote a book with Drew Conway called Machine Learning for Hackers, which was published last month by O’Reilly Media. It’s an introduction to basic machine learning algorithms for programmers who’d like to skip the mathematical notation that ML algorithms are traditionally described in. You can pick up a copy from Amazon or your favorite bookseller.
2. I’ve been working on completing my research projects at Princeton so that I can submit my dissertation on time next year and finish my Ph.D a year from now.
3. I’ve been preparing to spend my summer this year as an intern at Microsoft Research, where I’ll be working with Scott Counts.
4. I’ve been developing materials for teaching Bayesian methods to people with some knowledge of statistical theory, but no knowledge of Bayesian theory and no experience using advanced computational statistical methods like MCMC. You can find the materials I’ve prepared for a short seminar course I’m now offering on GitHub.
5. Amid all those academic pursuits, I’ve also been maintaining some semblance of a social life, which consumes those rare hours when I’m not working.

That said, the book is published and the summer is fast approaching, so I’ve decided that it’s time to start blogging again. Expect to see a couple of posts about Julia, Bayesian methods and Null Hypothesis Significance Testing in the coming weeks.