I wrote a Python class for manipulating normal distributions. I use it as part of some code for GMMs (https://github.com/stober/gmm). I was looking for code that supported conditioning and marginalization on arbitrary indices. There didn’t seem to be any out there so I wrote this to fill in the gap (at least for Python).
I like IPython, but I’m not sure I understand it, and my lack of understanding has caused me some pain recently when a pickle file (Python object serialization for the uninitiated) would not open. I’m not even sure I’ve figured out how to reproduce the problem, but I did find a very simple example of some code that runs fine in Python but not IPython:
Running this with
python ipickle.py
gives:
stober[~/Dropbox/workspace/gist]{laptop}$ python ipickle.py <__main__.A instance at 0x10cc37bd8>
Running the same thing with IPython
ipython ipickle.py
produces decidedly different output:
stober[~/Dropbox/workspace/gist]{laptop}$ ipython ipickle.py --------------------------------------------------------------------------- AttributeError Traceback (most recent call last) /Users/stober/Dropbox/workspace/gist/ipickle.py in <module>() 16 pickle.dump(A(), open("A.pck","w")) 17 ---> 18 a = pickle.load(open("A.pck")) 19 print a /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/pickle.pyc in load(file) 1376 1377 def load(file): -> 1378 return Unpickler(file).load() 1379 1380 def loads(str): /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/pickle.pyc in load(self) 856 while 1: 857 key = read(1) --> 858 dispatch[key](self) 859 except _Stop, stopinst: 860 return stopinst.value /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/pickle.pyc in load_inst(self) 1067 module = self.readline()[:-1] 1068 name = self.readline()[:-1] -> 1069 klass = self.find_class(module, name) 1070 self._instantiate(klass, self.marker()) 1071 dispatch[INST] = load_inst /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/pickle.pyc in find_class(self, module, name) 1124 __import__(module) 1125 mod = sys.modules[module] -> 1126 klass = getattr(mod, name) 1127 return klass 1128 AttributeError: 'FakeModule' object has no attribute 'A'
What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.
Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
If I were a career academic in a senior position the dynamic present here would give me pause and instigate some serious soul searching.