Data discovery: seasonal speed
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate
by nsaunders
2M ago
Just writing this one quickly as it’s been hanging around my browser tabs for weeks… I wrote Taking steps (in XML) almost 7 years ago and once in a while, I still grab Apple Health data from my phone and play around with it in R for a few minutes. Sometimes, curve fitting to a cloud of points generates a surprise. library(tidyverse) library(xml2) theme_set(theme_bw()) health_data <- read_xml("~/Documents/apple_health_export/export.xml") ws <- xml_find_all(health_data, ".//Record[@type='HKQuantityTypeIdentifierWalkingSpeed']") %>% map(xml_attrs) %>% map_df(as.list ..read more
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Gene names, data corruption and Excel: the final chapter?
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate
by nsaunders
5M ago
I suppose that after: Gene name errors and Excel: lessons not learned (2012) Data corruption using Excel: 12+ years and counting (2016) When your tools are broken, just change the data (2019-20) and Gene names, data corruption and Excel: a 2021 update (2021) it would be remiss of me not to mention: Microsoft fixes the Excel feature that was wrecking scientific data. Is it really fixed though? Users have to know that the feature exists, find it and toggle a checkbox. Given that the users most “at risk” probably open CSV files in Excel by default simply by clicking on them ..read more
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The “curse of the bye” revisited
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate
by nsaunders
9M ago
A while ago we looked at Geelong and the curse of the bye. And since the AFL media have outdone themselves this year with “curse of the bye” articles: see for example here, here, here and here, I decided to revisit the topic in more depth. If you like that kind of thing head over to the report at Github. It has lots of charts like this one. Executive summary: once you take into account scheduling and expected results, there’s little if any evidence for significantly more losses coming off a bye round. I doubt that will prevent the same spate of articles next season ..read more
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Has your knowledge stopped updating?
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate
by nsaunders
1y ago
Some years ago I read an article – I forget where – describing how our general knowledge often becomes frozen in time. Asked to name the tallest building in the world you confidently proclaim “the Sears Tower!”, because for most of your childhood that was the case – never mind that the record was surpassed long ago and it isn’t even called the Sears Tower anymore. From memory the example in the article was of a middle-aged speaker who constantly referred to a figure of 4 billion for the human population – again, because that’s what he learned in school and had never mentally updated. Is this t ..read more
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Editing metadata in trail camera images using R, magick and exiftool
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate
by nsaunders
1y ago
I have a new hobby: camera traps, also known as trail cameras. Strapped to trees in my local bushland they sit in wait, firing automatically when triggered by a passing animal. Once in a while, something quite magical happens. The camera model I chose is the Campark T85 which for me, had the right combination of features and price point. One useful feature is the ability to transfer images and video to a phone wirelessly (albeit through a rather clunky phone app). Unfortunately, images retrieved in this way have one major flaw: an almost-complete absence of metadata. There is no GPS in the ca ..read more
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Using R to detect the pressure wave from the 2022 Hunga Tonga eruption in personal weather station data
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate
by nsaunders
2y ago
It seems like an age ago, but in fact it was only mid-January 2022 when this happened: The satellite imagery from the Hunga Tonga eruption is unreal. Direct your attention to the lower right. The eruption then shock wave is simply incredible. pic.twitter.com/OTLCgyEozQ — Taylor Trogdon (@TTrogdon) January 15, 2022 Wow. Now, pause for a moment and try to recall the last time you read any news about Tonga since the event. The eruption sent an atmospheric pressure wave, clearly visible in this imagery, around the world. Friends online reported that this was detected by their personal weather s ..read more
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Using R/fitzRoy to ask: how many times a V/AFL team with the same lineup has played together?
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate
by nsaunders
2y ago
If you sit in the intersection of “likes Australian Rules football / finds sport statistics interesting / is on Twitter”, you’ve probably come across Swamp. One of his recent tweets tells us that: No V/@AFL premiership winning lineup have all played together in another V/@AFL match, there has always been at least one person missing All MELB 2021 premiership players are still at the club in 2022 @melbournefc — Swamp (@sirswampthing) March 16, 2022 You may go on to ask: has any team lineup from one of the almost 16 000 recorded games played together again in another game? And if so, how oft ..read more
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Enhancement of old colour photographs using Generative Adversarial Networks
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate
by nsaunders
2y ago
It’s almost Christmas, I haven’t posted anything in a while and I see that WordPress has an Image Compare feature, so let’s have some colourful fun. When I’m not at the computer writing R code, I can often be found at the computer processing photographs. Or at the computer browsing Twitter, which is how I came across Stuart Humphryes, a digital artist who enhances autochromes. Autochromes are early colour photographs, generated using a process patented by the Lumière brothers in 1903. You can find and download many examples of them online. Stuart uses a variety of software tools to clean, enh ..read more
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Gene names, data corruption and Excel: a 2021 update
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate
by nsaunders
2y ago
It’s an old favourite of this blog, isn’t it. We had Gene name errors and Excel: lessons not learned (2012). Followed by Data corruption using Excel: 12+ years and counting (2016). Perhaps most depressingly of all, the conclusion of the trilogy, When your tools are broken, just change the data (2019-20). Well, I’m happy (?) to see the publication of the latest instalment, inspired in part by the title of my first post: Gene name errors: Lessons not learned, from Mark Ziemann’s group. Here’s the accompanying Twitter thread. Summary: it’s even worse than we thought. Tagging this one with the R t ..read more
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How I resurrected my ancient PhD thesis using R/bookdown (and some other tools)
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate
by nsaunders
2y ago
An ancient thesis I’ve long admired the look of publications generated using the R bookdown package, and thought it would be fun and educational to publish one myself. The problem is that I am not writing a book and have no plans to do so any time soon. Then I remembered that I’ve already written a book. There it is on the right. It’s called “Cloning, sequence analysis and studies on the expression of the nirS gene, encoding cytochrome cd1 nitrite reductase, from Thiosphaera pantotropha“. Catchy title, hey. It’s from my former life, as a biochemistry graduate turned reluctant molecular micro ..read more
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