Market Testing with Epsilon-Greedy Strategy

I came across this article which describes the epsilon-greedy strategy for testing user responses, a big improvement over A/B testing.  It’s essentially a simple greedy algorithm with a randomization component to ensure that all possible choices are tested.

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Fast and Faster Fibonacci Algorithms

Writing Fibonacci functions can be a fun exercise, and a good test of your understanding of recursion.  But did you know there’s a faster, more efficient way to calculate Fibonacci numbers?  A formula, based on Phi (the golden ratio), which is attributed to Binet, but dates back to Euler before him, makes calculating them extremely fast.  Throw in a little caching and your shiny new Fibonacci function is absolutely blazing!

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REST, JSON, HTML and node.js: Connect Them All

It’s been awhile since I’ve published anything, and I think it’s high time I shared some of the fun I’ve been having recently. The most practical of which — JSON — is not new for many people, but when combined with a REST API built in node.js, it all becomes super-cool, super-fast and super-fun to play with.  And no, I did not overuse the word ‘super’. Okay. Maybe a little.

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Character Sets and Character Encoding: A Unicode/UTF-8 Primer

Recently, I’ve been forced to fill a number of gaps in my knowledge of international character sets and encodings. The most important thing I learned is that understanding and working with international languages is surprisingly simple.

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Resty: REST/JSON in Java Made So Much Easier!

I love it when something so useful is made so simple to use.  Take a look at Resty, an all-in-one HTTP client for Java with native support for parsing JSON.

Here’s an example from the Resty website:

Resty r = new Resty();
Object name = r.json("http://ws.geonames.org/" +
  "postalCodeLookupJSON?postalcode=66780&country=DE")
  .get("postalcodes[0].placeName");

Data Science Toolkit

Yesterday, I came across this little gem of a public API: Data Science Toolkit

From their web site:

A collection of the best open data sets and open-source tools for data science, wrapped in an easy-to-use REST/JSON API with command line,Python and Javascript interfaces. Available as a self-contained VM or EC2 AMI that you can deploy yourself.

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