(Rejected) Letters to the Editor (V. I)

This week is a slow week. I spent the weekend in Idaho at my grandparents for my brother and grandfather’s birthday, and my grandparents still live in the dark ages (that is, they have no Internet). So this week, I’ll be sharing letters I’ve written to The Salt Lake Tribune that were never published. Enjoy!

On Programming Languages; Why My Dad Went From Programming to Driving a Bus

In Data Science from Scratch, a book introducing data science using Python, Joel Grus said the following about R (pg. 302):

Although you can totally get away with not learning R, a lot of data scientists and data science projects use it, so it’s worth getting familiar with it.

In part, this is so that you can understand people’s R-based blog posts and examples and code; in part, this is to help you better appreciate the (comparatively) clean elegance of Python; and in part, this is to help you be a more informed participant in the never-ending “R versus Python” flamewars.

Signs of Trouble for Chaffetz

I submitted the following as a letter to the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune. Chances are it will not be published, so I share it below.

Both Utah Republicans and Democrats Should Consider Voting for Evan McMullin (No, Seriously)

I rely on FiveThirtyEight to tell me the direction of the election, and a few weeks ago, Utah suddenly became very interesting. Evan McMullin, a previously unheard of candidate for President (who entered the race only a few months before Election Day), appeared in Utah’s forecast numbers with a surprisingly large probability of winning Utah’s electoral votes. Benjamin Morris then wrote about how Evan McMullin could plausibly not only win Utah’s electoral votes, but the Presidency as well.