I wanted to write a quick post pointing out something that I don’t think has been widely appreciated about the covid19 R value now familiar to everyone. You have probably seen a version of the graphic showing how one infected person leads to an exponentially growing number of cases if... [Read More]

Often the key to writing good code is not having a mastery of whatever programming language you are using, but in using mathematical tricks to express whatever your doing in a way that has an easy solution. I thought I would write up one of my struggles trying to make... [Read More]

Having had a lot of mathematical training, I’ve tried to draw comfort in this pandemic from using that training to understand what is going on in generalities. I’ve really done this for my own gratification, but I am writing up a collection of semi-related thoughts using very high level mathematical... [Read More]

Trying to find which genes are “different” between different conditions is probably the first thing anyone wants to do with a bulk RNA-seq experiment. When we say “different”, what is really meant is which genes show a greater difference in expression than is expected by random statistical fluctuation. The size... [Read More]

These days I write most of my code in R. All things being equal, I’d really rather not. But I work in biology and most of my colleagues and collaborators use R, so it’s easier to do the same. [Read More]