In the past years, finding some way to train hill running prior to races was difficult for me. I tried office staircases but they were boring and the air was dry and stuffy, so I failed to follow my training plan. Ever since moving to Switzerland, this is no longer a problem. I ran some statistics over activity data pulled from Strava, and the results are promising.
How do the macronutrients we eat─carbs, fat and protein─turn into energy that the muscles can use as fuel? How to answer this question without failing to see the forest for the trees? In this post, I am trying myself at a high-level abstraction based on the book Lactate Threshold Training by Peter Janssen.
What happens if a computer scientist tries to understand more about the heart and lung supplying the muscles with oxygen? The computer scientists applies graph theory. Out comes the flow conservation principle, and─woosh─there’s a diagram relating cardiac output, oxygen consumption and oxygen intake.
Spaced repetition learning (SRL) is a technique to memorize a large amount of items, such as vocabulary when learning a foreign language. In this article, I am writing about a primary benefit that I see in SRL: under the assumption that SRL is effective, I claim that SRL is also efficient; the amount of repetitions grows sublinearly in time and new items to learn.
“Factfulness” is a fantastic book, remaining as current as it was when I purchased it. It gives us “ten reasons we’re wrong about the world and why things are better than you think”. Today, I am going to have a look at the Straight Line Instinct and the forecasted world population growth.
A review of Scott Page’s Model Thinking course, which has been overall entertaining, inspiring, informative albeit at times a bit repetitive when going through arithmetics. If you are interested in trying to make sense out of the complex world around you, this course might be for you.
In this article, I am reverse-engineering the Swiss healthcare system, with the help of some maths and diagrams. In particularly, I am looking at the impact of the deductible when buying a basic insurance policy. How much difference does the choice of deductible make?
In a typical programmer’s unimaginativeness, let’s print out a localized version of the few words that everyone starts with: Hello, Switzerland. After almost six years, a step into a new country again. It is time for a thought abroad.
The fifth post on my “London ─ Living through history” series • touching modern British history • about Brexit • on gaining British Citizenship • let us maintain, build, and rebuild bridges.
Why London left a lasting impression • architecture, accumulated over millenia • where old meets new, in one place • why it is worthwhile to look at the same place at different times • where old meets new.
How to find the outdoors while living in London • London has surprisingly many green spaces • thanks to Paul New, Cliff King, Rachel Dench • thanks to the London Social Runners • on England’s history of volunteering • you cannot avoid the air pollution • you often have to stay on public footpaths • historic sightseeing in run-by mode.
London is large enough to accommodate the population of Switzerland • speed flatmating is not for me • receiving solace from Thomas Edison • London is more than what you can see on the tube map • Nappy Valley • between the Commons • some fences are pointless • houses, as far as the eye can see.
I moved to London from Stockholm at the beginning of April 2014. I left university life behind and moved on. Back then I had no idea how long I would live in London. And even less of an idea, what changes there were in store for me. I am now soon leaving London─although only time wil tell for how long. It seems only appropriate to add some closing thoughts on this chapter.
In the UK, I was recently asked by someone how much money would remain from their income after taxes. While I could give a pretty good estimate, I discovered I had actually no idea how the net income is actually computed. None of the documentation I found was easy to understand. However, I can read maths. And I can look at pictures. So here’s a visual approach to a net income calculator for the UK, for dummies like me.
A second, brief post on my quest for becoming independent from commercially sold bread. Where I got tips for free (and then dutifully paid for merchandise), and where to get all the flour you cannot find in your UK supermarket.
But not for the reasons that you would imagine. I just failed to realize bread making is neither time consuming, nor particularly difficult. For those who are not satisfied with the bread available to purchase, and those who don’t want to wait seven years to find a solution, let me write this down…
No need to climb the ladders up Mount Everest if you have the staircase of an eleven-floor office block to scale. This staircase is going to replace the hill training for me in the months to come. Around 8890 meters over 2068 floors in 17 weeks. Let’s see how difficult that is.
How high will be ozone levels in London next year? I have looked into the London Average Air Quality dataset in order to see patterns and to produce crude estimates. Here is what I learnt about ozone and discovered about roadside and backgroudn ozone levels in London.
Assume you are practicing for an exam. You could spend all your time left until the exam practicing (possibly too much), or you could spend almost no time practicing (likely too little). So how do you know when enough is enough? When can you stop practicing and yet be confident that you will pass the exam?
Today, I’ll demo how to train a logistic regression model in BigQuery ML. That is Machine Learning models written in SQL, and executed in BigQuery.
OpenAQ is publishing real-time air quality data from around the world to BigQuery. Today, I have poked around in the dataset to inspect air quality from many places of the world.
Postcard-Britain! The 66 mile race course took me from Farnham over the very pretty & snow-covered North Downs, until the snow subsided and was replaced by mud, past Box Hill until Redhill and back the next day. This post is about the madness that is required to enjoy such an adventure, and the odd things that you might encounter.
London has so many parks. Today, I managed to run and visit thirteen of them on an extended sightseeing trip, discovering various artwork while doing so, and passing through many different neighbourhoods. I failed to complete the XNRG Santa Virtual Ultra Challenge, but I regret nothing.
A comeback to the world of ultra-running. This time, I ran (and walked) the Ridgeway from Tring to Swindon in three days as part of the XNRG Druid’s Challenge.
Whether you are an event organizer waiting for participants to turn up or whether you are a bus driver waiting for passengers running to catch the bus, there is a dilemma: if you are so kind and wait for everyone to arrive, you make everyone else wait. Let’s explain the dilemma with probability theory.