# Recent Posts

• ## Accessing World Bank Data from Julia

While looking for ways to access the World Bank data bank programmatically, I found this very useful library to access it with Julia (along with many others for python and R). The library is WorldBankData.jl, by 4gh. Although the repo doesn’t have much activity, the library works great. Here are some examples of what can be done with the World Bank data, and the powerful Julia dataframes. I will also use Plots.jl for visualizations;

• ## Representing pi in Julia

Julia excels as a numeric computation language. It is even faster than C for certain tasks, but has a syntax almost as simple as that of python. Although, at the beginning, Julia syntax might seem similar to python, things start to change when you want the best performance, or specific numerical functionalities. This is the case of precision specification. When it comes to numerical computing you must be able to have as much precession as you want. Let’s say you have the geeky goal of memorizing the first hundred digits of pi. Just printing it to the console won’t cut it, since pi is an irrational number (represented in julia by the type ::Irrational{:π}):

• ## Estimate Pi in one line with Julia

A montecarlo aproximation relies on large random sampling to obtain numeric results. This is, guiven a known distribution of data, can you aproximate a numeric value? You can read more about it here.

• ## Model of RC circuit

The RC circuit will be important for later posts so I have decided to create a small one about it. It is also a good chance to try out SchemDraw, a circuit diagram drawer for python.

• ## Electric Circuits Diagrams on Python

Recently I found the need to draw electrical circuits to show the relation of neural models to them. For this I found a tool within python that lets you draw most common circuits by defining them line by line. It’s called SchemDraw, and you can find it here.

• ## Polynomial Roots

The roots of a polynomial, as you might have learned in highschool, are the intersections of the polynomial curve through the x-axis. The problem with the graphical method of finding roots is that not all of them are real. Actually, creating random polynomials will create mostly complex roots.

• ## Fast Fourier Transform

The Fourier transform is a wonder of modern days. It lets us decompose any harmonic signal into it’s components, converting time to frequency. If signals were a cooked meal, the Fourier transform would be able to tell us all the ingredients! For its use in the common digital world, it’s faster version is used: the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT).

• ## Fresnel Integrals

Named after Augustin-Jean Fresnel Fresnel integrals are:

• ## Twitter Stream Exploration

Twitter is a great source of live data, which can be used in many different areas, all concurring to the core of it’s functionality: social data. In this exploratory analysis I will go from extracting twitter data to doing some basic analysis on it.

• ## What is Readme Driven Development?

Readme Driven Development or RDD, is a development process where you start your projects by writing the README file. Sounds logical, right?

• ## How to README

A README file is probably the most important part of any documentation. It is the first contact anyone should have with your code, and it should be clean and structured so even a final user could understand it. If you are writing the readme for your code you shoul consider adding these points:

• ## DeepDream

No cognitivist could avoid noticing google’s new demonstrations on Deep Learning posted on their research blog this june. Images all over the web like those on google’s own gallery showing what artificial neural networks “see” when trying to make sense of images make everyone wonder how could a machine make such beautiful, weird, and surprisingly familiar images.