software posts

Skrub 0.2.0: tabular learning made easy

We just released skrub 0.2.0. This release markedly simplifies learning on complex dataframes.

model = tabular_learner(‘classifier’)

Simple, yet solid default baseline

The highlight of the release is the tabular_learner function, which facilitates creating pipelines that readily perform machine learning on dataframes, adding preprocessing to a scikit-learn compatible learner …

Getting a big scientific prize for open-source software

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An important acknowledgement for a different view of doing science: open, collaborative, and more than a proof of concept.

A few days ago, Loïc Estève, Alexandre Gramfort, Olivier Grisel, Bertrand Thirion, and myself received the “Académie des Sciences Inria prize for transfer”, for our contributions to the scikit-learn project …

Beyond computational reproducibility, let us aim for reusability

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Scientific progress calls for reproducing results. Due to limited resources, this is difficult even in computational sciences. Yet, reproducibility is only a means to an end. It is not enough by itself to enable new scientific results. Rather, new discoveries must build on reuse and modification of the state …

Data science instrumenting social media for advertising is responsible for todays politics

To my friends developing data science for the social media, marketing, and advertising industries,

It is time to accept that we have our share of responsibility in the outcome of the US elections and the vote on Brexit. We are not creating the society that we would like. Facebook, Twitter …

Unison 2.48 binaries for ARM

I have built static binaries of Unision 2.48 for ARM

Of software and Science. Reproducible science: what, why, and how

At MLOSS 15 we brainstormed on reproducible science, discussing why we care about software in computer science. Here is a summary blending notes from the discussions with my opinion.

“Without engineering, science is not more than philosophy”     —     the community

How do we enable better Science? Why do we do software …

MLOSS 2015: wising up to building open-source machine learning

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The 2015 edition of the machine learning open source software (MLOSS) workshop was full of very mature discussions that I strive to report here.

I give links to the videos. Some machine-learning researchers have great thoughts about growing communities of coders, about code as a process and a deliverable …

Software for reproducible science: let’s not have a misunderstanding

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tl;dr:   Reproducibilty is a noble cause and scientific software a promising vessel. But excess of reproducibility can be at odds with the housekeeping required for good software engineering. Code that “just works” should not be taken for granted.

This post advocates for a progressive consolidation effort of scientific …