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Information Field Theory
Prompt to Claude Sonnet 4.6: “Critically examine NIFTY and the “information field theory” framework of Enßlin. Is it essentially Gaussian processes as parent distributions of relatively simple hierarchical Bayesian models, and the major difference to standard methods is MGVI/geoVI being a higher order VI method, or are there important other contributions other than rebranding.” What…
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Replace “using AI” with “using interpolation”
(2nd try after HN feedback) When cloud computing was a new, cool buzzword thrown around that no one understood, a shortcut was suggested whether it is the right solution: In any sentence, replace “in the cloud” with “on another person’s computer”. “Computing on the cloud” becomes “computing on another person’s computer”.“I backup my data to…
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Perfectionism and Dilettantism
Finishing projects is an art. You need to balance pragmatism of getting things done with the bar on quality you set for yourself. Many people I know are perfectionists, and have a high standard for themselves. This often comes from parents saying something like “why did you not get the highest grade?”, and class mates…
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IQ is for stupid people
In 2017, I took an Uber in Boston to the airport. The driver was a young Russian. We talked about our backgrounds, and he mentioned “oh, you must be very smart to be a scientist”. Then he brought up that there might be a few extremely smart people, in the world, like with an IQ…
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Are rich people kinder?
In the movie Parasite, the poor family going through a tough time is sitting together talking about the rich family they just interacted with: Ki-taek: She’s so naive and nice. She’s rich but she’s still nice.Chung-sook: Not “Rich but still nice.” Nice because she’s rich, you know? Hell, if I had all this money, I’d…
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Replace “using AI” with “using computers”
When cloud computing was a new, cool buzzword thrown around that no one understood, a shortcut was suggested whether it is the right solution: In any sentence, replace “in the cloud” with “on another person’s computer”. “Computing on the cloud” becomes “computing on another person’s computer”.“I backup my data to the cloud” becomes “backup to…
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The hero of your story
If you try confronting wrong behaviour, you are in trouble. When people hear they did something wrong, their mind first goes into the question of whether they are a malicious actor, then immediately rejects that idea as unfathomable, then rejects anything else you say as coming from a unreliable source. Understanding and working with the…
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Publication time in astronomy vs statistics
After submitting a paper to an astronomy journal like MNRAS, ApJ, A&A, PASP it is quite typical to receive a referee report within 1-2 months. A search of my emails confirms this – green, orange, blue histograms are astronomy journals: For statistics journals, the waiting times can be much longer in my experience. For Statistics…
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The top and bottom halves of data analysis in astrophysics
There are two approaches to analysing data, which I will call the bottom and top half. Bottom half Look at images and data by eye. Discover anomalies and outliers. Argue primarily qualitatively. Potentially preprocess the anomaly-finding with machine learning. It’s a good approach for junior scientists to start looking at data (a) and understand its…
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Reliability
Three decades ago, the word was “four nines”. Internet providers and company server administrators would take pride to deliver a service that was working 99.99% (four nines) or 99.999% of the time,. In German and Swiss culture, reliability is highly valued and this has been a differentiating factor, for example for automobiles and watches. Chains…