Blog

TabPFN x Lyceum: State-of-the-art tabular data prediction and easy compute in VS Code

Machine Learning
Computers
Engineering
What if you could achieve state-of-the-art prediction accuracy without any model training or data pre-processing, all of this on your own IDE?
Oct 27, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Brooklyn 99 and the Islander Problem

And some information theory
Mathematics
There are 12 men on an island (referred to as “islanders”). All of them have the same weight except for one, that is either heavier or lighter. The challenge is to find who…
Aug 24, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Coffee Machines and Optimisation

Computers
Our world is full of choices and existential dilemmas. What to have for lunch, what to study, or what to do this Saturday evening?
Aug 20, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Understanding the World with Occam’s Razor

Survival of the Simplest
Computers
Machine Learning
If you cannot find your keys, it could be because a wild gnome broke into your flat, stole them and brought them back to the underworld. It could also be because you left…
Aug 10, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Quantization for Deep Learning Models

Computers
Machine Learning
In the latest 5 years, Deep Learning models have grown larger and larger. With numbers like the 175 billion parameters of ChatGPT-3.5, it has become difficult to make sense…
Jul 31, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Leading Teams: A Data Scientist’s Perspective

Management
Life
Can you remember some of the leaders that inspired you? What did they have in common? Think about this for a minute before reading on.
Jul 22, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Smart Clipboard: Building a simple Python script to bring Generative AI to the clipboard

Computers
Engineering
Travelling on a train on a Friday or walking through the office of a company’s headquarters, it is common to see the same workflow happening over and over: copy-pasting…
Jul 14, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

What is Quantization?

Saving Bits
Computers
Machine Learning
As Large Language Models get larger and larger, their memory footprint has become a growing concern. Memory is not a problem for ChatGPT or other chat-based web apps that…
Jul 9, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Remaking Liberalism: Daron Acemoglu at the LSE Festival

Life
Economics
This is a transcript of a talk given by Acemoglu at the LSE Festival on the 18th of June 2025 (link). I recommend watching the video to enjoy Acemoglu’s presentation style.
Jun 19, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Managing People: A Data Scientist’s Perspective

Management
Life
Three years ago, I was promoted to a Team Lead position. I was 26 and absolutely clueless. Until then, I would have described myself as a technical person, passionate about…
Jun 8, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

TabPFN: A revolution in Machine Learning with tabular data

Machine Learning
Computers
Only three times in my career did I feel “aha” moments that forever shifted the understanding I had of my job as a Data Scientist. The first was when I used a Genetic…
Jun 1, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Sticks and Stones (may break my collarbone)

Life
I recently broke my collarbone. I had to undergo surgery and am now half man, half machine. This article is my attempt to make sense of the experience and share some…
May 27, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Berkson’s Paradox: When selection creates correlation

Machine Learning
Computers
You are hiring a team of Data Scientists. Doing so, you look for two critical skills:
May 20, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

The Three Card Problem

Maths
I have three cards:
May 20, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Do shorter words have longer dictionary definitions?

Language
Data Analysis
Most of the books I read are on my Kindle. One of the features of the Kindle I love is its dictionary feature. I use it frequently when I read books in other languages or in…
May 10, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

What is a derivative? Building a geometric intuition

Maths
The world around us is always changing. Cars drive along the highway, we get older, and temperatures fluctuate. Measuring the rate of change is tricky, as it always requires…
May 6, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

What is a derivative? Building a graphical intuition

Maths
But Eliott, what is a derivative?
May 2, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Radio waves, blue sky, touch screens: How LLMs can answer questions about the world around us

LLMs
Life
I have always been very curious about the world around me. I like to think that as a kid, one of the reasons I was talking so much is that there were so many things to…
Apr 25, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

A gentle introduction to prediction with Machine Learning

Machine Learning
Computers
How can we generate predictions using Machine Learning? How do basic mathematical tools allow us to make better decisions?
Apr 24, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Sophie’s World: a masterclass in teaching dry concepts

Books
Teaching
I had heard the title Sophie’s World a few times before. When a close friend recommended it to me a few weeks ago, I decided to give it a try.
Apr 23, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Learning German: From 0 to C1 in 2 years

Life
Three years ago, I made one of the best decisions of my life and moved from London to Berlin. There is one detail that I had not fully considered: German.
Apr 17, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

How to Get a Blog Up from Scratch in 1 Day Using Quarto and Netlify

Blog
Computers
Over the last two years, I avoided publishing my blog for technical reasons. I did not know how to build it, how to host it, etc. The purpose of this post is to show how…
Apr 14, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

Understanding Gini Impurity in Decision Tree Learning

Machine Learning
Computers
While preparing for an introductory course on Machine Learning, I realised that I could not explain what the Gini Impurity criterion was. I understood that it measured how…
Apr 11, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

What if all words were computed equal?

Machine Learning
Life
Computers
Experiences with Data Science interviews made me realise that, to solve problems you do not know the answer to, it helps to start laying out what you already know and…
Apr 1, 2025
Eliott Kalfon

The Beauty of Sharing: More Elegant Solutions

Maths
Computers
Blog
A few months ago, for the first time in my professional life, I shared an article I had written on LinkedIn. Nothing happened.
A few weeks ago, I did it again, and I was…
Mar 30, 2025
Eliott Kalfon
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