JakeColtman

This looks really impressive, great to see deep stats libraries in python to compete with R! Are you the author of the project?

Thanks for the pointer to the blog, looks amazing. Bookmarked!

FWIW I wasn't suggesting sticking to one language exclusively, some of the biggest jumps I've made have been caused by exposure to different paradigms. But for beginners I think it can be helpful to keep focus in one place. There's a lot of overhead involved in a language (tooling, IDEs, best practices, quirks etc.) that can get in the way of seeing the important stuff.

Here's a link to the book http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/, you can dl it from that page. Depending on how much stats theory you already know, you might find the labs sections the most useful.

As for the course, I'd love to advise but I really don't feel qualified as I don't know much about it, your background or what you want to achieve from it. I've generally found msoft resources to be excellent in the past though.

Generally where are you at? Do you have a good knowledge of the stats but not much programming or are you relatively new to both?

We used it at uni a lot but these days I tend to use it as a last mile language. Get the data, format it etc in python/f# then bring in the big R guns.

Things like BMA or survival analysis barely exist in python.

I have a great R stats book that I'll post when I get home (can't remember the name off the top of my head)

Edit: to be clear I wouldn't recommend that pipeline! Most of my professional work has been in the above so I'm just more comfortable with it

For straight up data analysis R over python every time but the flip is python is a better gateway to more mainstream programming (IMO).

At the end of the day motivation is the most important thing though. It seems likely that R will better fit your current interests and hence make you more likely to continue the journey so I'd go that way

The article pretty neatly avoids any considerations of Britain's history. When she was at the height of her leadership of the West (Victorian period) she had a similar attitude of being detached from mainland Europe. Disraeli (PM) even called Britain a primarily Asiatic power

The article also blurs Western values with "American foreign policy". Engaging with powers we don't see eye to eye with in non-military ways should be seen as expressing western values.

Anecdotally, more difficult mental work causes me to mentally fatigue faster which feels like good evidence against the claim

Confirming source here http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/euro/adoption/index_en.h...

There's an interesting question around the fact that the UK has an opt out of the Euro.

I agree that would be a good sign but it's hard to support the claim there was no enemy at hand with a heavily militarized USSR almost next door

I agree that protectionism is normally bad, but the reason that it is bad is that it suppresses competition most of the time.

If guelo's argument that Google not being in China fostered more tech companies in China is correct, then removing an initially dominant foreign company with big first mover advantage and economies of scale can actually increase competition in the market.

That said, once the home grown companies are sufficiently mature to compete on a level playing field with already established companies I agree the protectionism should be withdrawn again