Model vs. Algorithm
As discussion about Artificial Intelligence has become a mainstream topic, we hear a lot of terms used in loosely.
Recent Posts
Using Days of the Week to Understand Modulo
Today is Monday January 1st 2024, what day of the week will it be in 7 days?
BGV in R
We begin by loading 2 packages, polynom for dealing with polynomials and my package HomomorophicEncryption which has several helper functions.
Computing on Encrypted Data - What? Why? Toy example
Encryption is typically used to protect information like written communication from evedropping, such as messages sent over the internet.
CKKS encode encrypt in R
This blog posts shows how to perform CKKS encoding and encryption, followed by decryption and decoding to obtain the original vector of complex numbers.
HEtools on PyPI
My new Python package HEtools is now on the Python Package Index (PyPI):
libactivation on PyPI
My new Python package libactivation is now on the Python Package Index (PyPI):
transformer package on CRAN
My new R package transformer is now on CRAN:
BFV Homomorphic Encryption in R
This is an implementation of the BFV schema in R:
attention package on CRAN
The attention R package, describing how to implement from scratch the attention mechanism - which forms the basis of transformers - in the R language is now ...
Self-Attention from Scratch in R
EDIT 2022-06-24: this code is now available (with helper functions) in the R package attention, which is on CRAN. You can install it simply using: install.pa...
Online Office Hours
With over a year working from home and an end not immediately in sight, I felt it was time to think a bit structurally about how to work remotely as effectiv...
Ron Graham’s Game
For a job interview at WHO I was asked by build a numeric version of Noughts and Crosses (Tic-Tac-Toe to some), this is called Ron Graham’s Game (repo).
Tech Learn Talks
Today I gave a presentation at the UN Innovation Network’s TechLearnTalks (archived, backup):
Slides 2nd Homomorphic Encryption Standardization Presentation
The slides from my presentation at the Homomorphic Encryption Standardization Consortium meeting on 6 February 2020 at Microsoft Research in Seattle (archive...
Slides International Actors Digital Health
The slides from my briefing on the ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health at the Roundtable on International Actors in Digital Health (arc...
PWA of QR code to WhatsApp
Earlier this year I was in China, and in order to communicate with local delegates I installed WeChat. WeChat has a very handy feature that replaces exchangi...
ITU-D SG2 Briefing on FG-AI4H
The slides from my briefing on the ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health to Study Group 2 of the ITU Development Sector at their Workshop...
homomorphic encryption in R
Homomorphic encryption is allows computations to be performed on encrypted data. This has enormous potential in areas of machine learning that deal with priv...
Slides Homomorphic Encryption Standardization
The slides from my presentation at the Homomorphic Encryption Standardization Consortium meeting on 17 August 2019 at Intel HQ in Santa Clara:
Backpropagation: the simplest form
doing backpropagation using pen and paper
Compiling TensorFlow on Arch Linux
Your CPU supports instructions that this TensorFlow binary was not compiled to use: SSE4.1 SSE4.2 AVX AVX2 FMA
Promoting Content in Africa
In the keynote at African Peering Forum (AfPIF) 2016 I presented the Promoting Content in Africa report written together with Michael Kende, these are the sl...
Making the Next Billion Demand Access
The Local-Content Effect of google.co.za in Setswana
rnn: a Recurrent Neural Network in R - on CRAN
The rnn R package, describing how to implement from scratch the Recurrent Neural Network algorithm) in the R language is now available on CRAN.
sigmoid package
The sigmoid package makes it easy to become familiar with the way neural networks work by demonstrating the key concepts using straightforward code examples.
Coding a Recurrent Neural Network from Scratch in R
This is an example of how to build a Recurrent Neural Network in R. What we will do is generate two sets of random numbers, a and b, which we will sum up, ...
Handcoding a Logit Model
Below is an example of how to handcode a logit model.
Handcoding a Difference in Differences
In this post we will discuss how to manually implement a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) estimator in R, using simulated data.
Handcoding a Panel Model
The most basic panel estimation is the Pooled OLS model, this model combines all data across indices and performs a regular Ordinary Least Squares Estimation.
Neural Network IV with Simulated Data
Some simulated data, borrowed from this post.
Neural Network Instrumental Variables
A simple example
Hand Coding Instumental Variables
In a previous post we discussed the linear model and how to write a function that performs a linear regression. In this post we will use that linear model fu...
learNN package
The learNN package makes it easy to become familiar with the way neural networks work by demonstrating the key concepts using straightforward code examples....
Linear Model and Neural Network
In this short post I want to quickly demonstrate how the most basic neural network (no hidden layer) gives us the same results as the linear model.
Hand Coding Hilton’s Dropout
Andrew Trask wrote an amazing post at I am Trask called:
Hand Coding Gradient Descent
Andrew Trask wrote an amazing post at I am Trask called:
Coding a Neural Network from Scratch in R
Andrew Trask wrote an amazing post at I am Trask called:
Hand Coding the Power of a Test
We want to test if our population average is different from twenty.
WIOD data sets package
The wiod package is now available on CRAN. The package contains the complete WIOD data sets, in a format compatible with the decompr and gvc package.
Hand Coding Categorical Variables
In last week’s posts we discussed handcoding a linear model and writing a convenient function for this, in today’s post we will take this a step further by i...
Hand Coding a Linear Model function
In yesterday’s post we developed a method for constructing a multivariate linear model with an intercept.
The Linear Model from Scratch in R
When it comes to econometrics, the main take aways from the workshops are primarily in terms of the syntax of yet another computer program.
introducing diagonals
A new R package diagonals is now available on CRAN. The package implements several tools for dealing with fat diagonals on matrices, such as this one:
plot.ly
Quick experiment on embedding plot.ly graphics.
diagonals in a network
A typical example in which diagonals can be helpful is Social Network Analysis. For example, if we use matrices to represent friendship perceptions between i...
Male/Female Bargaining Power and Child Growth
Increased male bargaining power in households causes greater expenditure on food, an improvement in Weight-for-Age Z-scores in young children, and a deterior...
gvc package on CRAN
A new R package gvc is now available on CRAN. The package implements several global value chain indicators
decompr on CRAN
I am proud to announce that after a few emails back and forth with Prof. Brian Ripley, which consisted mostly of me appologising for not following the proper...
Data Science Specialisation
Yesterday the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health published a post about their Data Science Specialisation on the online MOOC platform Coursera.
Learning R and Git
In yesterday’s post I discussed some of the principles I use to make my work replicable and - to an extent - reproducible. In this post I want to collect som...
Replicable Development Economics
The tagline of this blog says something replicable development economics using R and git. So far, I have posted gimmicks on new R tools such as shiny, rmarkd...
profile photo
The below image is licenced under CC-BY-4.0
A jekyll blog
What are jekyll, markdown, and git(hub)? and why would you need all of this for a blog, in stead of a simple Blogspot of Wordpress page? The short answer is ...
The decompr package
I am proud to announce the beta version of the decompr R package. The package implements Export Decomposition using the Wang-Wei-Zhu (Wang, Wei, and Zhu 2013...
ggvis, shiny, and HTML5 slides
ggvis is wonderful new tool to create interactive graphics, which was build with Shiny apps in mind. In this post I will go over how you can create a Shiny a...