Category Archives: General

Chocolate and the Nobel Prize – a true story?

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Chocolate - a close up picture

Few of us can resist chocolate, but the real question is: should we even try to resist it? The image is CC by Tasumi1968.

As a dark chocolate addict I was relieved to see Messerli’s ecological study on chocolate consumption and the relation to the Nobel prize. By scraping various on-line sources he made a robust case for that increased chocolate consumption correlates to the number of Nobel prizes. Combined with that it might have positive impact on blood pressure, the evidence is strong enough for me to avoid changing any habits, at least over Christmas 🙂

Tutorial: Scraping the chocolate data with R

Inspired by Messerli’s article I decided to look into how to repeat the analysis in R. Continue reading →

Finally – 64-bit software is here

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For a while I’ve been wondering when we’re going to do the switch to full 64-bit systems… and it’s finally happening!

Flash and Java are finally available in 64-bit version. Without these two the wheels stop turning… well I guess Flash days might be counted with Apples push towards HTML 5.

I’ve also found this new awesome browser Waterfox that loads heavy sites such as CrossValidated in no-time. Regular Firefox is non-responsive for 30 seconds while I barely notice the MathJax script loading with Waterfox. Continue reading →

Encrypt your data

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Keeping your stuff under lock and key. The image is CC by aussiegall

Keeping your stuff under lock and key. The image is CC by aussiegall.

We often have sensitive information that we want don’t want to fall into the wrong hands. When doing research this is extra important and while everyone talks about having a robust security few tell you how you should do this. I’ve therefore collected some useful tips on basic encryption and security. Continue reading →