Top all-time · #3315
Rasmus Bååth
Personal blog · sumsar.net/blogdatamath
Rasmus Bååth's personal blog at sumsar.net covers data and math. Since 2014, 22 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times, most often “Why Pandas feels clunky when coming from R (2024)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Rasmus Bååth's posts on R versus pandas and on Bayesian statistics. His 'Why pandas feels clunky when coming from R' is the most-cited piece, and commenters call it a great article.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Why Pandas feels clunky when coming from R (2024)6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-02-20
- A Bayesian Model to Calculate Whether My Wife Is Pregnant (2015)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-11-06
What Hacker News says?
Completely agree, from the perspective of someone that primarily uses R/tidyverse for data wrangling, there is this great article on why Pandas API feel clunky: https://www.sumsar.net/blog/pandas-feels-clunky-when-coming-...
Comment linking /blog/pandas-feels-clunky-when-coming-from-r/
on “FireDucks: Pandas but Faster”Submitted Why Pandas feels clunky when coming from R (2024) as a story · 90 points
HN discussionThis article reminds me of another great article comparing R to Python: "Why pandas feels clunky when coming from R" ( https://www.sumsar.net/blog/pandas-feels-clunky-when-coming-... )
Comment linking /blog/pandas-feels-clunky-when-coming-from-r/
on “Python is not a great language for data science”Submitted Why Pandas feels clunky when coming from R as a story · 71 points
HN discussionI've had some luck showing John Kruschke's Bayesian estimation supersedes the t-test (BEST) and this simple demonstration http://www.sumsar.net/best_online/ to people.
Comment linking /best_online/
on “Redefine statistical significance”Submitted Tiny Data, Approximate Bayesian Computation and the Unpaired Socks of Karl Broman as a story · 47 points
HN discussionhttps://brohrer.github.io/how_bayesian_inference_works.html https://oscarbonilla.com/2009/05/visualizing-bayes-theorem/ https://plus.maths.org/content/maths-minute-bayes-theorem http://www.sumsar.net/blog/2017/02/introduction-to-bayesian-... http://www.yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes
Comment linking /blog/2017/02/introduction-to-bayesian-data-analysis-part-one/
on “Bayes’ Theorem in the 21st Century (2013) [pdf]”Submitted Why Pandas feels clunky when coming from R as a story · 20 points
HN discussion> We found R has a really hard time integrating into data pipelines and was best used as a standalone tool by individuals In my org we have several 100% R teams (including mine) that have been developing and maintaining business-critical, data-intensive applications for a decade now. We don't find R difficult to integrate into data pipelines. We write our data pipelines in R, and we find it very efficient to do so.…
Comment linking /blog/pandas-feels-clunky-when-coming-from-r/
on “R: Introduction to Data Science (2019)”Submitted Basic MCMC and Bayesian Statistics in BASIC as a story · 16 points
HN discussionBasically with tidyverse, R can let you write less code and keep it readable: https://www.sumsar.net/blog/pandas-feels-clunky-when-coming-... Can't speak to abandonment, but it seems a lot of recent devel is occurring inside the the tidyverse, which is deprecating a whole bunch of other stuff.
Comment linking /blog/pandas-feels-clunky-when-coming-from-r/
on “R: Introduction to Data Science (2019)”Submitted Image Dithering in R (2019) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionPure python scripts, maybe using the #%%-convention ( https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/jupyter-support-py... ) so you get the best of both notebooks and scripts, in a right-sized instance/container/machine. And if you need to run jobs in parallel, then orchestrate using make, like so: https://www.sumsar.net/blog/makefile-recipe-python-data-pipe...
Comment linking /blog/makefile-recipe-python-data-pipelines/
on “Ask HN: What is the simplest data orchestration tool you've worked with?”Submitted The Source of the Cake Dataset as a story · 3 points
HN discussion- Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabarrok): economics https://marginalrevolution.com - John Cochrane: economics https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com - Interfluidity (Steve Randy Waldman): all over the place, but mostly economics-focused https://www.interfluidity.com - FT Alphaville: finance and economics, free signup required https://ftalphaville.ft.com - Money Stuff (Matt Levine): finance and economics, very…
Comment linking /blog/archives
on “Ask HN: What is your primary source of news in 2018?”Submitted A Bayesian Model to Calculate Whether My Wife Is Pregnant (2015) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionGateway drug: Everyone's favorite old-school t-test, brought into the modern world: https://www.sumsar.net/best_online/ Here's the story of the tool: https://jkkweb.sitehost.iu.edu/articles/Kruschke2013JEPG.pdf (Kruschke's books and papers are a terrific resource for learning real-world applied stats)
Comment linking /best_online/
on “Engineering Statistics Handbook”Submitted Bayes.js: A Small Library for Doing MCMC in the Browser as a story · 3 points
HN discussionA closely related idea is Approximate Bayesian Computation : https://www.sumsar.net/blog/2014/10/tiny-data-and-the-socks-...
Comment linking /blog/2014/10/tiny-data-and-the-socks-of-karl-broman/
on “The Law of Large Numbers, or Why It Is a Bad Idea to Go to the Casino”Submitted Public Pinball Machines per Capita: A new global indicator as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Big Data and Chess: Predictive Piece Values Over the Course of a Game as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rasmus' Meeting Length Formula as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Bayesian Model to Calculate Whether My Wife Is Pregnant (2015) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The probability my son will be stung by a bumblebee as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted How I made some Pokémon Business Cards as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Bayesian Model to Calculate Whether My Wife Is Pregnant or Not as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Big Data and Chess: What Are the Predictive Point Values of Chess Pieces? as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
