Both the World Health Organization‘s statistical profile of Qatar and the much more detailed Annual Health Report of the Department of Epidemiology and Medical Statistics of the Sate of Qatar show beyond the shadow of a doubt that cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, hypertension, obesity and other metabolic/noncommunicable diseases are ... [Read more...]

  The starting point of this post is a simple question: can we use R to analyze punk bands ? And, as a result: what can we learn from applying data analytics methods to punk music ?   Whether we like it or not “punk rock is arguably the most Read More ... [Read more...]

  In the previous post (mostly based on EDA principles) I highlighted the main features of 1,720 Venture Capital deals that took place in 2016 in 50 different countries. It is of a central importance to once again underline that the dataset that I used is not a representative sample Read More ... [Read more...]

  Over the year 2016, I manually gathered press clippings announcing Venture Capital (VC) deals from various online or newsletters public sources each time I bumped into something that caught my attention. Early January, I then put together and cleaned the data and made it R-usable as a csv dataset Read More ... [Read more...]

  There is no exaggeration in stating that historic heritage is one of the most outstanding and valuable assets of Italy. The smallest villages or the largest cities, all boast hundred- (sometimes thousand-) year old buildings of great cultural, architectural, or artistic interest. Amazingly enough, a vast majority of these Read ... [Read more...]

The ritual is now well established: since more than a century, every year on early October, the STEM small-world but also the media and many science-&-technology aficionados and enthusiasts wait for the Nobel Prizes announcement. As the 2016 round of Nobel laureates was announced a few days ago only, perhaps ... [Read more...]

[1] [2] [3] At a moment where many are preparing for the December 31st evening cocktail, the End of Year speech of the President of the Italian Republic is broadcast right on time at 8:30pm. A tradition which came to be with the constitutional establishment of the Italian Republic itself (or Read More ... [Read more...]

[1] [2] [3] In the mid-1980s, while I was a first-year student in physics at the Bologna State University (Italy), a few friends of mine dragged me to the School of Drama, Arts and Music Studies (DAMS) to follow a couple of lessons of Umberto Eco. I still remember how Read More ... [Read more...]

[1] [2] Early April 2016, the release of a video recipe of pasta carbonara on Youtube triggered a tsunami of reactions. Following all the negative and sarcastic comments, the original video –sponsored by Barilla– was removed by the author (the French food blog demotivateur.fr) but is still available online. Hostile Read More ... [Read more...]

[1] [2] [3] Over the last 40-50 years, the international spread of the passion for football has revealed as one of the most pandemic social phenomena. Something that was considered as a fun form of national craziness typical of Brazilian, British and Italian people in the 1960s and ’70s is Read More ... [Read more...]