I spent the last two weeks cleansing my body of years of accumulated waste and slug. I was assigned a very, very specific detoxification diet, designed to remove toxins naturally. More on that in a second. My friend and a soon-to-be naturopathic doctor Chelsea Schreiner both gave me the idea for this OWO and mentored me throughout the process. Ideally, this should be a 3-6 weeks long regime, but as I have better things to do and try, I compromised with a two week regime. It was more than enough.

So, what is a detoxification diet? It is a diet designed to naturally support your body's detox instruments, namely your liver. By ingesting some foods, according to the theory, your liver will increase its detox process, but in this new active state it must be supported. And, to let your liver sweep up everything, it must not be muttled down by extraneous toxins. What do I mean by extraneous toxins: all most everything delicious. Let's examine what I couldn't eat:

• red meat
• dairy products
• peanuts
• soy
• processed sugar
• corn and corn byproducts
• wheat
• gluten
• oats, barley etc.
• alcohol =(
• vegetables from the Nightshade family, eg: tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers
• bananas, citrus, strawberries
  
• and finally, caffeine. f**k

So looking at the set of all foods, what I could eat was a pretty small set. The idea of the diet is to take in large amounts of vegetables. So one having a good hand at cooking vegetables is key to doing this diet. Lucky, I'm fucking awesome. But this only solves a partial problem: vegetables are not enough! And without wheat and potatoes, you have to get creative with substantial foods to eat. Enter quinoa: the most delicious, detox-friendly grain known to man. I created a wonderful quinoa dish that I would be happy to eat whether detoxing or not (the recipe is at the bottom of this article). What about breakfast - what did I eat for breakfast? Typically it was light: an apple, a glass of almond milk + a pea-derived protein powder. Lunch was usually a soup I prepared: common was split pea soup or carrot-ginger soup. I made a really nice spinach curry soup that I would make again. Supper was again soup, curried cabbage or quinoa salad. On a diet like this, it is important to snack often, lest you have 0 energy, so I supplemented by meals with carrots + humus, celery + tahini, nuts, fruit and daydreams of doughnuts.

Ok, so what happened? How did the two weeks go? Bad, then good. I underestimated what caffeine withdrawal was like. What an unpleasant feeling! Head and body-aches, and constant feelings of lethargy. For four days I suffered like this. The only relief was my constant naps in classrooms. In my experience, a brain without caffeine, or some other stimulant, is a dull brain. I constantly felt unmotivated, and even apathetic at times. Contrast this to now where all I can think about is 'how can I get more shit done in less time--oh and my coffee cup is empty'. So included in my caffeine withdrawals was withdrawals from my regular diet. Chelsea, my mentor, recommends to her patients who embark on a detox diet to gradually eliminate foods. Not me. I don't have time for that. So I literally went from gorging on junk (in preparation of a two-week fast), to clean, sugar-free, diet. The shock layered my sufferings. So if the first week was bad, the second week was much better. I found my cooking and diet stride. Preparing food was easier. Even my palette changed, and I found sweetness and flavour where I otherwise never did. But still the issue of lethargy hanged over me. Over the two weeks, I could not dispel it. My body - no, my brain - is powered by coffee.

I did feel better eating all these vegetables and avoiding nasty foods. Whether the feeling with an actual mental response to less bodily toxins, or purely psycho-somatic is debatable. I slept better. I was more regular (infact my whole digestive tract changed for the better). I lost a few pounds (actually I'm not sure, but probably). But I knew this diet was temporary. I had my entire day's diet planned the day after this experiment was finished: coffee + cinnamon buns in the morning, burger and fries for lunch, and Indian food for dinner. And a beer. Waking up that morning was like Christmas morning!

What are my thoughts on the diet now? I think it is an interesting diet for those for which it is recommended. I entered the diet only because it was a challenge, not for any health benefits or allergen profiling.

So I know this write-up was late, and in fact I have already done another OWO inbetween when I finished this and now (it was a private one, sorry can't say what it was), but next week I will be bullying my morals around. Stay tuned and stay away from me next week. =)

Quinoa salad

• 1 cup of quinoa grain
• tsp of cumin
• splash of olive oil
• splash of balsamic vinegar
• chopped spinach
• diced red onion
• diced green onion
• optional: chopped radishes, chopped almonds, or grated carrots
• salt and pepper to taste

Wash the quinoa in cold water. Add two cups of water, add some salt and the cumin. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a lower simmer. Once all the liquid is absorbed, let it sit to room temp. Put into fridge to cool (or freezer w/e). As the quinoa is cooling, prepare vegetables. Combine remaining ingredients once quinoa is cool enough. Eat .

Read more

I'm proud to announce my latest project, dataorigami.net! Why are you still here, go check it out!

An open-source library for stochastic processes in Python

PyProcess is an open source library meant for quick, useful and robust simulation of stochastic processes in the Python programming language. From the homepage:

PyProcess is a Python library for generating random processes. What is a random processes? A random process is a sequence of numbers, none of which are known with certainty. For example, a particular stock or commodity in financial markets are random processes, as their value in the future is random. Another example is the number of cars in a parking lot: you don't know how many cars will be present in the future. PyProcess is a tool used to generate possible realizations of the stock market, or number of cars in a parking lot, or any other random process.

PyProcess Online

For even an even quicker use, or to see a demo of what processes and options are available, one can use the PyProcess web-app

PyProcess is an open-source project, hence will never be completed 100%. That being said, I welcome any bug reports, assistance, or features that one would like to see added.

Many of my projects involve hacking on the Twitter API and using said API to construct games, re-tell stories or otherwise just troll people. Check out some of my Twitter related projects to the right.

Twitter, if you are seeing this, I'd love to hack on your end. Please allow me an interview for a data analytics position. So much of my data and research involves you guys. Also, it's so cool you visited my site.

Twittxor is a Twitter-based game that challenges a user's knowledge of the people they follow on Twitter. The best way to explain it is to actually just play it, so click below to visit the game.
It was built in Django/Python with the assistance of python-twitter. The code for the web app is available on GitHub.

Probablistic Programming and Bayesian Methods for Hackers

A book I am main author of introducing Bayesian methods for the non-mathematical. Awesome stuff! See the Subway station on the North of the map.

Responsive art project (unnamed)

I'm designing a kinetic-responsive art project that will display a chaotic system in response to my phone's movements.

Interactive Subway maps

I've got a great library to build subway maps [1], [2]. Now what?

jPattern

typing password into mobile devices is a pain. What if you could swipe in your password for mobile sites? Check out my in development jPattern test.

From the repo on Github:

Probabilistic Programming and Bayesian Methods for Hackers

Using Python and PyMC

Bayesian method is the natural approach to inference, yet it is hidden from readers behind chapters of slow, mathematical analysis. The typical text on Bayesian inference involves two to three chapters on probability theory, then enters what Bayesian inference is. Unfortunately, due to mathematical intractability of most Bayesian models, the reader is only shown simple, artificial examples. This can leave the user with a so-what feeling about Bayesian inference. In fact, this was the author's own prior opinion.

After some recent success of Bayesian methods in machine-learning competitions, I decided to investigate the subject again. Even with my mathematical background, it took me three straight-days of reading examples and trying to put the pieces together to understand the methods. There was simplely not enough literature bridging theory to practice. The problem with my misunderstanding was the disconnect between Bayesian mathematics and probabilistic programming. That being said, I suffered then so the reader would not have to now. This book attempts to bridge the gap.

If Bayesian inference is the destination, then mathematical analysis is a particular path to it. On the other hand, computing power is cheap enough that we can afford to take an alternate route via probabilistic programming. The path is much more useful, as it denies the necessity of mathematical intervention at each step, that is, we remove often-intractable mathematical analysis as a prerequisite to Bayesian inference. Simply put, this computational path proceeds via small intermediate jumps from beginning to end, where as the first path proceeds by enormous leaps, often landing far away from our target. Furthermore, without a strong mathematical background, the analysis required by the first path cannot even take place.

Probabilistic Programming and Bayesian Methods for Hackers is designed as a introduction to Bayesian inference from a computational/understanding-first, and mathematics-second, point of view. Of course as an introductory book, we can only leave it at that: an introductory book. For the mathematically trained, they may cure their curiousity this text generates with other texts designed with mathematical analysis in mind. For the enthusiast with less mathematical-background, or one who is not interested in the mathematics but simply the practice of Bayesian methods, this text should be sufficient and entertaining.

The choice of PyMC as the probabilistic programming language is two-fold. As of this writing, there is currently no central resource for examples and explanations in the PyMC universe. The official documentation assumes prior knowledge of Bayesian inference and probabilistic programming. We hope this book encourages users at every level to look at PyMC. Secondly, with recent core developments and popularity of the scientific stack in Python, PyMC is likely to become a core component soon enough.

PyMC does have dependencies to run, namely NumPy and (optionally) SciPy. To not limit the user, the examples in this book will rely only on PyMC, NumPy and SciPy only.

Examples from the book:

1. Infering human behaviour from SMS message rates, Chapter 1.
2. Solving the Price is Right Showdown, Chapter 5.
3. Implementing Kaggle winning solutions, Chapter 5.
4. Exploring Github's social datasets, Chapter 10.
5. Aerospace data, specifically the Challenger Spacecraft explosion, Chapter 2.
6. Financial models wth non-linear payoffs, Chapter 5.

Probablistic Programming and Bayesian Methods for Hackers

A book I am main author of introducing Bayesian methods for the non-mathematical. Awesome stuff! See the Subway station on the North of the map.

Interactive Subway maps

I've got a great library to build subway maps [1], [2]. Now what?

jPattern

typing password into mobile devices is a pain. What if you could swipe in your password for mobile sites? Check out my in development jPattern test.

Kaggle Competitions / Machine Learning posts

Kaggle.com is a site that provides companies and researchers with the global data science department. They host machine learning competitions for professional and amateur data scientist and machine-learnist to attempt, and winners receive sometimes quite large prizes (from \$500 to possibly \$3 million). I've been attempting a few competitions I found interesting, and overall I am doing well. More importantly I'm learning what doesn't work, and how to generalize to solve other data science problems. I guess one can call this human-learning =\

• Predicting US Census mail return rates
• Predicting Psychopathy using Twitter Data

Similarly, I've been creating really nice machine learning posts/tutorials. There are more mathematical than others, but always have a nice example to demonstrate the subject matter.

• Visualizing stock market clusters
• Least Squares Regression with L1 Penalty
• Kernelized and Supervised PCA

This site

This site is always a work in progress. This is currently the second implementation of my personal we site, the previous being the now dead 70percetfatfree.com. If you like the interactive subway component, you can download the javascript code from my Github account to build you own.

Twittxor!

During a hackathon, I put together a fun little Twitter game, Twittxor. Soon to go viral. BTW, if you know any comp sci or mathematics, the name Twittxor is a concatenation of Twitter and XOR (exclusive-or), which describes the game well.

PyProcess

I'm making I made a nice online graphical interface for exact Simulation of Stochastic Processes via Python (see below) using Django .

The Golden Retrieber

The only algorithm in the world that tries to find Justin Bieber, introducing The Golden Retrieber. This was a project for a stat. learning class, but I will hopefully evolve into a web app!

OWO: One Week Of

OWO is an attempt to pertubate my mental understanding into a new, higher state by exploring my own, and society's, pyschology, physiology, energy, prejudices, biases, spirituality, motivations, affections, all of it. Keep a close eye on this project.

PyProcess: Exact Simulation of Stochastic Processes via Python

The project PyProcess is a Python implementation of the research I did on exactly simulating stochastic processes. With the PyProcess library, you can exactly simulate many diffusion processes, jump processes (finite and infinite activiy) and combinations of processes. Here is a link to the Google project's Github's main page and the documentation. Please abuse my code.

Marketing Director and Webmaster

I was the marketing director and webmaster of the UW Cabaret, a small and terrific cabaret troupe. Check out our sweet website.

AMMCS 2013

Webmaster for the conference.

AMMCS 2011

To celebrate their centennial year, Wilfrid Laurier is hosting the 2011 Applied Mathematics, Modeling and Computational Science Conference. The conference is held between July 25th to the 29th. I, as I have too much free time, volunteered to help I was recruited to create the Book of Abstracts for the conference. It took me 100+ volunteer hours, so I might as well show if off. You can view it below:

Modeling human password creation

I used Python and 14 million leaked passwords to create a pretty cool machine-learning model of how humans create passwords.

Visit my github account [here]

1. Press and hold SHIFT and navigate the subway lines with your arrow keys. If your L33T-gamer, you can also use your WASD keys.
2. You can use your mouse to click on the different stations.

Who am I?

My name is Cam Davidson-Pilon. I spend my time on awesome subjects like machine learning, coding Twitter trolls, web design, data science and biology. I do stats consulting at statly.ca.

Machine and Statistical Learning

"There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think."
-R. Hamming

Machine learning has really taken over my time. With huge web-inspired data sets becoming more and more available over the past decade, it seems to be taking over everyone's time.

Also check out my blog, where I discuss and practice with common/rare machine-learning algorithms.

Evolutionary Systems and Biology

"A nest, like a bird, is a gene's way of making another gene." -R.Dawkins

In biology I study population dynamics, game theory and evolution, disease modeling (WITH stochastics) and applications to genetic algorithms. I recently started investigating host-parasite dynamics with sex. I believe that many sexual species' immune systems have evolved a quasigroup-like structure.

Probability and Finance

"Don't sell them 30% fat, sell them 70% fat free."-N.Taleb