Fabio E. Tonti

I always briefly tell my students about libs like BLAS etc. And when they ask me what they need to know: well, just that they exist and are important is a good starting point 😅

That's a nice one....

Posit’s progress and renewed commitment to the Open Source Pledge - Posit Posit continues its Open Source Pledge, investing heavily to support the open-source data science ecosystem.

I am tremendously grateful for open source, as it’s had such a huge impact on my career. That’s one of the reasons I’m so happy that Posit has committed to the @opensourcepledge.com. Read about our contributions to non Posit projects at posit.co/blog/posit-o....

web search results are such a wasteland now and I hate it

I miss finding cool information on websites that were clearly personal passion projects, or giant FAQs formatted in pure ASCII that explained everything about a niche topic

Are herons common around Edinburgh? A couple of weeks ago I spotted one close to Genova while traveling in the area, it left me deeply impressed.

Comic. Panels up to the 10-year point are grayed out. New panels since the Ten Years comic, which chronicles the first ten years of PERSON 1's journey with cancer: (1) [two people in bed] PERSON 1 (woman): One more chapter? PERSON 2 (man): Don’t we both have to get up early? PERSON 1: Nnnnnggggh PERSON 2: Sure, good point. (2) [many people wearing masks, walking while looking at graphs on their phones] (3) [birds landing on people] PERSON 2 in beanie and scarf: Hah! They like *my* seeds best. PERSON 1 in scarf holding phone with a bird sitting on it: Wait, how do I take a picture of this one? (4) [two people rowing boats with tree landscape] (5) [Person 1 carries overflowing stack of things to Person 2 in bed] PERSON 1: I brought you honey lemon tea, more pillows, a cinnamon roll, Tylenol, another blanket, a– PERSON 2: It was just Appendicitis, I’m really– PERSON 1: *It is my turn to take care of you and I am going to do it right!* (6) [Two people in car] (7) [still in car) PERSON 1: Oh my god. PERSON 2: Oh my god. (8) [car driving] PERSON 1: Pull over! PERSON 2: I am! (9) [both people get out of car] (10) [Large colored panel of aurora borealis over water with both people looking on] (11) [Person 1 sits against tree while Person 2 lies on the ground] PERSON 1: Fifteen years. No sign of the cancer. (12) I *am* having some weird symptoms. Joint pain. Fatigue. I think I’m losing my close-up vision. PERSON 2: Yeah. Me too. (13) PERSON 2: I think we’re getting old. (14) PERSON 1: I guess that’s okay. PERSON 2: It’s all I wanted.

Fifteen Years

xkcd.com/3172/

Dear Lord 🥺

A New Bridge Links the Strange Math of Infinity to Computer Science | Quanta Magazine Descriptive set theorists study the niche mathematics of infinity. Now, they’ve shown that their problems can be rewritten in the concrete language of algorithms.

I was not aware of this recently found link between descriptive set theory and distributed algorithms on graphs. Neat! www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-bridge...

I honestly find the MensWearGuy inspirational for what I think a good kind of cultured humanism can look like. This is the sort of presence I would like to have in the world.

To me personally that's a really uplifting perspective. I just wish I had figured out (or hit a wall for) the second part a bit earlier in my career.

“Enjoy the result you have found by exploratory subgroup analysis, for you will not find it again.” Sayings of Confuseus

Recently read somewhere in its docs that Pandas 3 will default to copy on write for many operations, wonder how they thought of that 😬 (not that I'm too fond of Pandas, unfortunately)

Python is not a great language for data science. Part 2: Language features It may be a good language for data science, but it’s not a great one.

Part 2 of my deep dive into Python as a language for data science.

blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/python-is-...

Nice reference on using LaTeX as a mathematician: github.com/nchopin/best...

Has definitely always been a thing in Italy in summer... I was really impressed in Melbourne last July that it's a thing in winter!!

Woooo that's the typesetting hero level we all aspire to:)

Any chance your grandfather was born in the uk? My very Australian partner has never heard the phrase before...

Didn't know of the personal history text, glad you posted. Since I know 3nf (but don't know much about db design otherwise and find that the whole db community makes the most obtuse wiki articles), does that make me sound more or less applied?!

What intro stats textbook to use?
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/11/09/w...

It's a very good book! I don't even want to know how. Many hours of work people have put into that book...

Ordinals (set theory) and ordinal variables have always been my favourites, and here both show up:)

I think we could only make that work with a lot more casual inference.

AI tells you what you want to hear, statisticians usually tell you what you don't want to hear

Great writeup and examples! I'm trying to move my teaching to plotnine (seaborn is really messy) and polars as well, unfortunately some colleagues always want the students to also know pandas 🙄
What's your pet flaw concerning pandas?

LLMs excel at programming—how can they be so bad at it? My explanation for the mystery of why LLMs can be both exceptionally good and quite terrible at programming.

I think I understand how it can be that LLMs are both exceptionally good and quite terrible at programming. It's because there are two entirely different skillsets that we both call "good at programming." LLMs have only one of them.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/llms-excel...

Are there no useful projections? From the image it looks like there should be.
Does anyone have examples of published 3d figures in fairly well-known publications?

Sure, but why did anyone start calling it a distance in the first place? I don't get it. But maybe I don't know enough deeper stuff done using it.

Blatant authoritarianism and the mindless injection of LLMs into higher education are both driving more and more academics to speak up about our social mission. A silver lining of sorts. We have been lazy to assume every understands our value.

Wait who has an unfavourable opinion of arXiv? Did I miss anything? Genuinely confused.

😅