Piet Daas

I know, pfff

Attending the SDSS 2024 conference in Richmond VA. It's not only the data science hotspot this week, it's also a craft beer capital. Just look at the beer menu in the Ale house I'm currently visiting!

Findings on identifying the creative industry in Eindhoven are available. Nice work ;-) cbs.nl/nl-nl/maatwerk…

Our latest paper, by me, Wolter Hassink, and Bart Klijs, is now available online. It's about detecting online platforms by using website texts. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

This is how optical illusions mess with your mind. First you see two dogs and their owner, and then...

Need to do some serieus thinking n these findings theconversation.com/two-questions-…

Nice read towardsdatascience.com/no-science-in-…

On my way to The Hague to teach Big Data to EMOS students!

Welcome to the 50 wins club, @Max33Verstappen #F1

Finally. UvA wil dat álle faculteiten overweg kunnen met data: folia.nl/wetenschap/158…

Interesting finding scientias.nl/denk-je-dat-je…

Nice comparison, all make mistakes! Chatbots Bard, Bing en ChatGPT in Nederland: wat zijn de verschillen? nu.nl/tech/6272331/c…

Preparing to travel and attend the #ISI2023 conference in Ottawa, Canada

A mind-blowing paper has come out today in @Nature In 2016, JC Venter Institute scientists trimmed a bacterial genome to its barest minimum required for life to synthesize what they called a "minimal genome" (science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…). Today, a group of scientists from Indiana University reports how that minimal genome evolved over 2000 generations in comparison to the non-minimal genome. The authors found that even when you reduce a bacterial genome to its absolute minimum where every nucleotide matters, the genome undergoes mutational events generation after generation as much as the non-minimal genome. One simply cannot stop the evolution. Just over 300 days of evolution (equivalent to 40,000 years in humans) the minimal cell has gained everything it lacked in fitness on day one in comparison to the non-minimal cell. When comparing the evolved traits between the minimal and non-minimal cells, the scientists found something striking. The evolutionary process increased the cell size of non-minimal cells but not that of the minimal cell. But that is not the striking part. The scientists were able to identify the key mutation that resulted in cell size evolution. And it turned out that the mutation that helped the non-minimal cells to grow bigger is the same that helped the minimal cells to stay smaller. Growing bigger had a survival advantage for non-minimal cells and not growing bigger had a survival advantage for minimal cells. So, the mutation had a context-dependent effect. This just demonstrates that the evolutionary effects on traits have no absolute direction. All that matter is what is beneficial for the organism's survival. The conclusion of the paper is metaphorically a quote from the Jurassic Park movie: “Listen, if there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us is that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories, and it crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but . . . life finds a way". (scienmag.com/artificial-cel…) nature.com/articles/s4158…

Attended a very interesting "week of globalization" event organized by @statistiekcbs @M_Jaarsma Presented our work on innovation and productivity using web texts with @MichaelPolder @pietdaas Dennis Cremers and Christiaan Vissers. See program aanmelder.nl/144182/part_pr…

In Dutch, but the interview is online. cbs.nl/nl-nl/corporat…

Traveling by train to Brussel to present at WIH-CON – Web Intelligence Hub Conference - 'Skills in the front row'

Why do I order an IPA, when I don't like IPA's? My fault ;-)

In Geneva, enjoying the expensive life and preparing for the Machine Learning in Official Statistics workshop tomorrow!

Looking forward to the #WIH-CON conference to explore the use of digital #data and #AI to support #trustworthy European #statistics to address societal challenges