Four short links: 14 Oct 2020
Data in Spreadsheets, Implementing Math, Skin-Printable Sensors, and Hype Cycle History
- Data Organization in Spreadsheets — Focusing on the data entry and storage aspects, this article offers practical recommendations for organizing spreadsheet data to reduce errors and ease later analyses. The basic principles are: be consistent, write dates like YYYY-MM-DD, do not leave any cells empty, put just one thing in a cell, organize the data as a single rectangle (with subjects as rows and variables as columns, and with a single header row), create a data dictionary, do not include calculations in the raw data files, do not use font color or highlighting as data, choose good names for things, make backups, use data validation to avoid data entry errors, and save the data in plain text files. A “must-read” for anyone who works with data. (via Thomas Lumley)
- Toward an API for the Real Numbers — To our knowledge, this is the first exploration of a practical general purpose real number type that both reflects the mathematical laws of the real numbers, and also supports exact comparisons in situations in which that’s normally expected. (via Morning Paper) (via Tim Bray)
- Sensors Printed Directly Onto Skin — Here, we report a universal fabrication scheme to enable printing and room-temperature sintering of the metal nanoparticle on paper/fabric for FPCBs and directly on the human skin for on-body sensors with a novel sintering aid layer. Consisting of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) paste and nanoadditives in the water, the sintering aid layer reduces the sintering temperature. Together with the significantly decreased surface roughness, it allows for the integration of a submicron-thick conductive pattern with enhanced electromechanical performance. Various on-body sensors integrated with an FPCB to detect health conditions illustrate a system-level example. (paywalled paper)
- A Quarter Century of Hype – 25 Years of the Gartner Hype Cycle — A presentation of several novel ways to visualize 25 years of the Gartner Hype Cycle. The good stuff starts about 1m40s in.
