ISSUE 434 · May 2, 2023

Tutorials & Opinions

Synthetic data could be better than real data

Getting computers to manufacture realistic data could help address privacy concerns in domains like medicine and education. And if researchers can find the right balance between accuracy and fakery, synthetic data could also help create better datasets to begin with.
Nature | Neil Savage

p Values Are Useful for A/B Tests, Sometimes

When you're running A/B tests, does it make sense to use p-values? According to the American Statistical Association, the answer is "no" but don't take that as a hard rule. In this post, Harlan Harris explores the use of p-values in A/B tests and when it does and doesn't make sense to use them.
Harlan Harris

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Tools & Code

charlatan

Inspired by Python's faker package, charlatan makes it easy to create fake data using R. Use it to create dummy data for names, phone numbers, emails, DOI numbers, genes, and more!
GiHub | rOpenSci

Resources

Understanding Large Language Models

Great reading list for getting up to speed with LLMs. This list explores some of the most influential papers for understanding the design, constraints, and evolution of LLMs — starting at the beginning. For each paper there's a short summary, key diagrams, and a link to the paper.
Sebastian Raschka

The Little Book of Deep Learning

Nice introduction to deep learning, starting with the basics of machine learning and efficient computation. From there, it covers a variety of topics including model components, architectures, and applications.
François Fleuret

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Career

How Academic Bullying Led This Data Scientist to Open Science

Unless you've been there, it's easy to be idealistic about jobs in academia. In this post, Paola Chiara Masuzzo shares her 12-year journey starting as an excited PhD student to being disillusioned with academia and the path she took to rediscover her love for science.
Eurach Research | Paola Chiara Masuzzo

New Opportunities

The Data Elixir Job Board currently lists 55 openings for a variety of roles, including data scientists, data analysts, machine learning engineers, researchers, and more. The roles cover a variety of levels, from entry-level to Director and most of the jobs are remote.
Data Elixir Talent Collective

Data Visualization

Making Middle Earth maps with R

Middle Earth might not be the most obvious place for a data visualization tutorial but this sure works well. Starting with a set of open-source shapefiles from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, the tutorial walks through a variety of spatial data visualization techniques, including projections, map layers, distances, scaling and more!
Andrew Heiss

Awesome ggplot2 🕶️

Great collection of curated ggplot2 resources including tutorials, packages, books, courses, galleries, related repos, and people to follow.
GitHub | erikgahner

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