Thanks to a friend I recently stumbled across this article by Melanie Mitchell in the New York Times on machine learning and its limitations. It highlights that despite the huge advances especially in deep learning, machines are still pretty far from ‘understanding’ things the way we do. They make mistakes we never would, are susceptible… Read More Getting at meaning is hard

‘Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.’ (gapminder.org/factfulness-book/) If you read one non-fiction book this year, make it ‘Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think’ by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund. If the name of… Read More Factfulness

While travelling, we spent lots of time on the road. And in some countries, traffic seemed pretty chaotic. To check whether this perception was correct, we checked rates of road deaths. These seem to be usually reported as a number per 100’000 inhabitants per year. And indeed, some roads travelled are more dangerous than others:… Read More Road deaths, or: what do people die of?

More on books! One book,  ‚Lean in‘ by Sheryl Sandberg, has long been on my list, but But I’ve also been skeptical. Sandberg encourages women to ‘lean in’ fully, not holding anything back because of societal and/or internalised barriers and norms. While I still think this is not the major problem underlying the whole gender… Read More Travel reads: gender

Unrestrained by thoughts about work, deadlines, and the chores of everyday life, and stimulated by all the new things I see every day, my mind has been able to wander and wonder much more freely during our travels. There’s so much freedom in simply having the curiosity and energy to ask very simple questions, inspired… Read More Travel: a time to wonder

As a traveller, costs matter – one might or might not be able to afford a longer stay in a less/more expensive place. But of course it also matters for the locals, especially in relation to their income. Traversing different countries, I have wondered quite a bit about the cost of living, income, and income… Read More Travel numbers: costs

A 6-month trip certainly provides ample time for reading, right? 4.5 months in, I have managed to read 18 books, mostly fiction, and lots of it fantasy, plus some – such as George Orwell’s 1984 – that have been on my list for a long time. I have also tackled a few non-fiction books, and… Read More Travel: A time to read

Nudged by my partner, I am taking the opportunity to take some time out after my PhD and travel (of course together with my partner ;-)). Whether I look for a job directly after my PhD or 6 months later doesn‘t matter that much (hopefully). So we came up with some areas of the world… Read More Post-PhD travels

Already, my PhD seems like it happened a long time ago. A year ago, I was writing up, and unlike what I hear from quite a few of my colleagues, I did not struggle (much). It definitely helped that I had two published papers and one finished manuscript to work with! I therefore ‚only‘ had… Read More PhDone

Since I have some time on my hands these days – I’m currently between handing in and defending my PhD thesis, which takes months at my university – I decided to up my programming skills, and am currently taking courses on coursera. One of them is on data visualisation (the next one will be on… Read More Look – data is beautiful