ChrisYou can play with the following interactive Python code to calculate the variance of a 2D array (total, row, and column variance). Here’s another practical example: What is the output of this puzzle?*Advanced Level* (solution below) Numpy is a popular Python library for data science focusing on arrays, vectors, and matrices. This puzzle introduces a … Read more
This article does not give you the standard advice: do what you love. You should love what you do but you don’t necessarily have to do what you love. Oftentimes, the love comes by being successful in a thing. But to be successful, you have to differentiate yourself in the 21st century. In business, it’s … Read more
Python’s library for data science, NumPy, allows you to slice multidimensional arrays easily. For multi-dimensional slices, you can use one-dimensional slicing for each axis separately. You define the slices for each axis, separated by a comma. Here are a few examples drawn from my comprehensive NumPy tutorial. Take your time to thoroughly understand each of … Read more
You may have read that Python’s godfather, Guido van Rossum, doesn’t like the map() function too much. He argues that it can be easily replaced with list comprehension which is not only faster but also more readable and shorter. Here’s an example: You can solve the puzzle on the interactive Finxter app before reading on … Read more
All programming is not created equal. Having said this, I don’t know a single programmer who regrets his choice of learning to program. With growing automation, programming becomes more and more a skill that is at the heart of many tasks in our society. No matter whether you work in the medicine, logistics, retail, or … Read more
Becoming a freelance coder is both easy and difficult. It’s easy because everybody can do it within a day or so. And it’s hard because most people fail miserably because they don’t know the right way of approaching this. Maybe you are interested in coding, or maybe you are already very good at coding. But … Read more
I’m a full-time online business owner working in the Python education space. But I started my career by working as a doctoral computer science researcher at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. While I was working there, I started my online business by finishing a few Python freelancing jobs. Creating a side-business helped me greatly in … Read more
So you want to participate in the booming “gig economy” creating an additional income stream by working from home? Members of my Python Freelancer Course ask this question a lot: what’s the best marketplace to sell your coding skills: Upwork.com or Fiverr.com? This is a multi-dimensional decision problem, but I have a clear preference. Read … Read more
I am not an attorney and this should not be taken as legal advice. It’s just based on my experience as a course creator. Teachable does not collect state sales taxes for you. They also don’t collect taxes for all international sales. If a user from Japan buys your course, you are responsible for paying … Read more
Have you ever calculated your market value as a Python developer? When estimating the value of a company, analysts often use multiples of its yearly earnings. Let’s take this approach to come up with a rough estimate of how much your Python skills are worth. Say, we are taking a low multiple of 10x of … Read more
If you’ve used the sklearn library in your own code, you may have realized that all attributes are suffixed with a trailing underscore. Here’s an example for the k-means algorithm: In the second-last line, we used the kmeans attribute cluster_centers_. Why does sklearn library not use the attribute name cluster_centers? ‘The short answer is, the … Read more
The answer to this one is simple (but not so easy to implement): Write a Python program to be executed on each machine. Write a (bash / shell) script that connects to your machines via SSH and starts the Python programs. You’ll need the IP addresses of all your machines. Use Python socket connections (based … Read more