The Joy of Fortran
Well, maybe “joy” is a strong word. But over the past couple of days, I’ve been programming in Fortran a bit for the first time in about two years. Fortran, for the uninitiated, is the oldest...
View ArticleFractal Landscapes in R
The past few days I’ve gone on a bit of a fractals kick. It’s partly been motivated by the recent passing of Benoit Mandelbrot, the iconoclastic mathematical genius who coined the term “fractal” and...
View ArticleFractal Landscapes in R: Part Two
My last post showed how, with some simple R code, it is possible to generate a surprisingly realistic mountainous profile, as if seen on the horizon. This was done by taking a two points, calculating...
View ArticleQueensland Rain: Quick ‘n’ Dirty Climatology
My last post, on the connection between the equatorial Pacific Ocean and the floods in Eastern Australia, closed with a graph of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) over the past 40 years, and with an...
View ArticleDIY Scale Dependence
What’s the big deal about “scale?” It’s a word that I’ve written about before here, and one that certain types of ecologists can’t seem to stop talking about. But it can be an infuratingly vague word...
View ArticleA Very Short Introduction to Time Series
Last week, I gave a presentation on the basics of time series statistics to an informal group of students in biology, forestry, and fisheries who meet every week to share tips and talk over problems...
View ArticleMust it be Santa? A case study in Bayesian updating
Ah, Christmas eve. A magical day when we reflect on the deep questions. Is there anything more valuable than family togetherness? What is the true meaning of the season? Who is that strange man...
View ArticleProgramming: the Legos of Math
Why should you learn to program? In my (limited) experience in the world of marine science, fisheries, and ecology, programming is more and more becoming part of the expected tool set. Consequently,...
View ArticleThe Julia Language is the Way of the Future
Recent surveys have shown that the R Language for statistical computing is undergoing an explosion in popularity among scientists, researchers, and other data-analyzing types. There are good reasons...
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