What better way is there to spend a Sunday afternoon than migrating old data…
I am just happy that it is done. I’ve also migrated an old domain so that blogspot can use it. Enjoy viewing my blog from codecuriosity.com instead of codecuriosity.blogspot.com
According to Wikipedia, Simpson’s paradox is an apparent paradox in which the successes of groups seem reversed when the groups are combined. Often encountered in social and medical science statistics when frequency data are given causal interpretations.
That probably did as much for you as it did for me when I first read it. Let’s look at the example.
There are two departments (Department A and Department B). Each department receives an equal number of male and female applicants. Of the 510 male applicants, 251 men were accepted and of the 510 female applicants, 109 women were accepted. That means for 360 positions, men took almost 70% of the positions. Initially, this seems like a clear cut case of sexism in favor of men.
However, when the departments are analyzed individually we find that department A had 500 male applicants and only 10 female applicants. Of the male applicants, 50% were accepted while 90% of the female applicants were accepted. In department B, 10 males applied and 10% were accepted, while 500 females applied and 20% were accepted.
What is the result? Overall we see men taking 70% of the available jobs, yet department A favored women by 40% over men and department B favored women by 10% over men. Now it appears that we have sexism in favor of women.
| Men | Women | |
| Department A | 500 applicants (50% accepted) | 10 applicants (90% accepted) |
| Department B | 10 applicants (10% accepted) | 500 applicants (20% accepted) |
| Totals | 251 accepted | 109 accepted |
How is it that two departments, both favoring women, resulted in men taking more jobs than women? It is all about where the majority of each sex put their application. In the case of the male applicants, most applied to a department that had a much greater hiring rate.
There are some other great examples, one in particular where something quite similar to the above occurred.
Came across a very easy to set up Django environment. No install, one file to download and only configuration for whatever you want to run as a configuration requirement. You can even set this up to run off of a flash drive, which I thought was pretty sweet.
Instantdjango should be able to start you on your first django web app in under 30 mins on most windows machines with no other pre-requisites.
There is also a hand holding guide from beginning to end targeted at very beginner level audience. Now back to tweaking my crime map.
I have a terrible tendency to accumulate bookmarks and not get the chance to go back and properly implement or use the article in question. In this case, that has more to do with spending little or no time on my web skills (HTML/CSS/Javascrip) in the last three months. Sure I have done some web work, but my spare time has been primarily on other things.
The first is a monstrous link dump on CSS techniques including obvious css related topics such as Page Layout, Menu/Navigation, Typography and others. Now perhaps you are not Max Kerning and typography doesn’t concern you more than life itself. Covering ways to avoid click jacking is also a good touch.
The second is something I came across after doing something similar myself. I’ve always disliked ASP.NET web forms, especially the XML tag soup and bloated code behind involved in forms validation (and most things). Something like this isn’t too difficult to implement, provides much more direct and immediate feedback to the user and can use server side validation to validate the data on the client side (validate it again just to be sure on submit though)
The last is very design centric, which is something I have never been very adapt at. Sure I can make something good, but it always feels like it takes longer than it should. Creating new sites from scratch is something I usually try to defer to something like free-css-templates. In any case, learning how to do this on your own is certainly a valuable skill when you cannot just reference someone else’s work and do away with hours of your own.
I’ve been a huge fan of ReSharper since I first started using it almost 6 months ago. It takes time and effort to make the most of any tool and ReSharper is no different. That said, the benefits are paid back ten times over with a tool that rarely lets you down. As I’ll likely bring up ReSharper in the near future, I’d like to post my favorite shortcuts. I can look at features like live templates or issues like memory usage another time.
| Ctrl-Alt-T | Bring up unit test explorer |
| Ctrl-E | Lists files in order of last access |
| Ctrl-N / Ctrl-Shift-N | Open type / Open file (SystemInfo can be found by shortcut SI) |
| Alt-Shift-L | Moves focus to currently open file in the solution folder |
| Ctrl-Shift-G | “Super Go”, brings up usuage, declaration, base, more… |
| Alt-Insert | Code generation, constructor, implement interface, more… |
| Ctrl-Shift-R | Refactoring options, rename, move, extract, pull up, more… |
| Ctrl-F6 | Change method signature. |
| Ctrl-Shift-Alt-Arrow Key | Move item up or down, including whole methods |
Intel has a set of guidelines available (publically) that are quite good. It breaks down into three key sections,
When You Engage
Stick to areas that you are an expert in.
Be respectful to the topic and others
Be thoughtful about what you post
Don’t disclose proprietary or confidential information
Be polite, especially when disagreeing with someone
Moderation Guidelines
Breaks down different content sections and rules for each.
Rules of Engagement
This is the most interesting and meaty section of the document. I recommend reading it directly.
Once in a while there is a good resource dump on Nettuts, today they had one on getting start with Ruby and Rails.
Essential Learning for Ruby and Rails
Hightlights for starting:
Microsoft offers a program for start-ups that enables them to get a large assortment of Microsoft related technology for free.
Initial eligibility is based on being a privately held firm (you lose status if you go public) and you can stay in the program for three years (you get assessed each year though).
They specifically list more details as well.
An eligible Startup must have the following characteristics at the time of joining:
- Actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that will form a core piece of its current or intended business[1]
- Privately held
- In business for less than 3 years at the time of enrollment[2]
- Less than US $1 million in annual revenue [3].
The highlights of what you can get are:
Here is a link
Seems a lot of people recommend live writer for blogging. This is probably old hat to anyone reading this, but I like saving information for my own sake sometimes.
I’ve also added the code snippet plugin that is available on codeplex.
public static void SomeMethod()
{
Func<int, int> sqrInt = x => x * x;
Console.WriteLine(sqrInt(5));
}
Seems to work better than the other snippet tools that I have played with, but I wonder how it holds up to edits.