Programming

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    At the moment I can’t compile this blog locally because my ruby-ffi install is somehow wrong and is preventing Jekyll from running on my recently upgraded Mac system. Fortunately the site still compiles on Netlify, or else you wouldn’t be reading this!
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    I had to compute an indicator this week. It had confidence intervals that relied on taking 100,000 samples from the indicator's approximate distribution. I had to repeat this over multiple GP practices and for twelve different demographic groups.
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    I love making plots in R with ggplot. However, there are always a few niggles that I forget about between plots. I wrote this post so that I have somewhere to look the next time I need to tweak a few things in my plots. I intend to come back and add updates in the future as I learn more things. If I keep coming back, I might also remember a few of these too.
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    The shiny app embedded below allows you to explore the number of packets you need to complete the Panini sticker album for this summer's Euro tournament. This builds on the results I presented in an earlier post and allows you to explore how many fewer packets you need to buy when you have more friends to swap with. You can also vary the number of runs performed because the model runs considerably slower with more swappers involved.
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    As a follow-up to my post about the Euro 2016 Panini Stickers, I've now completed the collection with the help of an online swapping site and by buying the last 39 stickers directly from Panini. I also managed to write a new simulator, this time with additional collectors involved.
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    I found "Learn X in Y minutes" (www.learnxinyminutes.com) while researching the programming languages needed for a new project. The site aims to help people who know at least one programming language to learn others by proving a quick run through of the main language features. It's not quite enough to get you up and running. After all, having sample code doesn't get you the compiler. However, it's a nice start that shows you how similar (and different) language X is compared to the one(s) you already know.
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    This is a longer form post about artificial intelligence inspired by reading a little bit of "The Pale King" by David Foster Wallace and putting a picture of a "ghost" up on Instagram. This might be the last of these that I'm able to write for a while.
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    Although I have put off finishing my UNO game for over eighteen months, I thought I would get started with another pet project of mine: making a Carcassonne game. This is not a serious affair, there is an excellent app of Carcassonne available for those of you who have iOS devices (it works particularly well on the iPad). The game just strikes me as having the right level of complexity to be a taxing yet attainable project. I’d also like to understand strategies for playing the game and what better way to evaluate strategies for games of chance than to have a simulator to play all those millions of games that you don’t have time to play?