Saturday, October 2, 2021

Published October 02, 2021 by theboat with 2 comments

Can You Confirm Performance Improvements With Noisy Software Benchmarks?

Say you run 20 tests before and after a code change meant to speed up the code, but there's a lot of noise in your benchmarks. Some simple statistical tests can help you determine if you actually have an improvement in that noise.

math, software

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Monday, September 13, 2021

Published September 13, 2021 by theboat with 0 comment

Why Do We Multiply the Way We Do?

We could just repeatedly add the numbers but we don't. Is the algorithm we use actually faster?

fun, math, software

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Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Published August 31, 2021 by theboat with 0 comment

Exploring Senior Software Engineer Salary Data in levels.fyi

levels.fyi is a great resource for software salary info and it's easily mineable. I was curious how salaries in what are sometimes considered medium cost-of-living cities compare.

fun

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Sunday, August 1, 2021

Published August 01, 2021 by theboat with 1 comment

How to Add a Vertical Scrollbar to Plotly

Plotly doesn't have the built-in ability to scroll vertically with a fixed x axis unfortunately, but you can mimic that fairly easily...

javascript, plotly, software

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Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Published June 30, 2021 by theboat with 1 comment

If 10 Vaccinated and 10 Unvaccinated People Die, Can We Still Say Vaccines Work?

You will almost certainly be seeing headlines about vaccinated people dying and might even see that more vaccinated than unvaccinated die. Here's one from the week that I wrote this post. Why do we still say vaccines work if this is happening?

math

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Sunday, June 13, 2021

Published June 13, 2021 by theboat with 8 comments

Wheel Options Strategy Simulations

The 'Wheel' is an options strategy that combines cash-secured puts with covered calls. I sometimes have trouble really grasping options strategies in my head, so simulating some scenarios gives me a better feel.

finance, math

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Friday, May 21, 2021

Published May 21, 2021 by theboat with 0 comment

Negative values with a log axis in Plotly

Although log10(<any number less than or equal to 0>) is not defined, there are situations where you want to visualize data as if it were. How can you get plotly to do that? Another way of asking is 'how can you mimic symlog functionality in plotly?'

javascript, plotly, software

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Sunday, May 2, 2021

Published May 02, 2021 by theboat with 1 comment

Simple way to see code coverage in python

Sometimes you want to quickly see unit test coverage of your code. Coverage.py makes that really simple.

python, software

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Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Published April 06, 2021 by theboat with 1 comment

Thinking in terms of probabilities

We suck at probability. A common trap we fall into is failing to realize this and thinking in terms of absolutes.

fun, math

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Sunday, February 7, 2021

Published February 07, 2021 by theboat with 1 comment

If the square root of -1 is i, what is the cube root of -1?

You probably learned at some point that the square root of -1 is i. What about the cubed root of it? There's the obvious answer of (-1)^3 = -1, but the answer isn't actually that simple.