Evolving notes, images and sounds by Luis Apiolaza
It has been a strange last ten days since we unexpectedly entered grant writing mode. I was looking forward to work on this issue near the end of the year but a likely change on funding agency priorities requires applying in a few weeks; unfortunately, it means that all this is happening at the same time I am teaching.
This coming Monday we start the first semester in Canterbury (and in New Zealand for that matter). We are all looking forward to an earthquake-free year; more realistically, I’d be happy with low magnitude aftershocks.
I installed the latest version (0.12) of IPython from source in my mac, but forgot that I had a previous version (0.10) installed using easy_install. When trying to run ipython I kept getting the error: No module named terminal.ipapp.
Fixing it. I ran easy_install -m ipython in Terminal, so Python doesn’t continue looking for the old package, as explained here. Then I was able to navigate to /Library/Python/2.6/site-packages and then use rm -r ipython-0.10.1-py2.6.egg. Now everything works fine.
I always struggled to understand the Monty Hall Problem, which popped up again in William Briggs’s site. The program assumes that initially the prize is equally likely to be behind one of the three doors. Once the contestant (player in the program) chooses a door, the game host (who knows where is the prize) opens another door that does not contain the prize. The host then offers the contestant the choice between keeping his original choice or switch to the unopened door.
Initially the contestant has 1/3 probability of choosing the door with the prize and 2/3 of choosing the wrong door. If the contestant has chosen the right door, switching means losing; however, 2/3 of the time Monty Hall is in fact offering the prize.
from __future__ import division
from random import randint
# Number of games and game generation
ngames = 10000
prize = [randint(1,3)*x for x in ngames*[1]]
player = [randint(1,3)*x for x in ngames*[1]]
# Evaluating success
default = 0
monty = 0
for game in range(ngames):
# Keeping decision
if prize[game] == player[game]:
default = default + 1
# Taking chance with Monty
if prize[game] == player[game]:
# Switching means losing
pass
# Switching means winning
else:
monty = monty + 1
print 'Probability of winning (own door)', default/ngames
print 'Probability of winning (switching doors)', monty/ngames
The final probabilities should be pretty close to 1/3 and 2/3, depending on the number of games (ngames) used in the simulation.
After using PmWiki (PHP wiki software) for nearly five years to maintain my web site I was a bit tired of fiddling with it. I then rolled out the following very simple and crummy Python script. Besides a basic Python distribution it only requires Python Markdown and Pygments.
There are no external templates or any other niceties–although it deals with unicode–but it just works.
#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: utf-8
import codecs, getopt, markdown, os, os.path, sys
# Some important constants
base_path = '/Users/luis/Dropbox/website/'
site_path = 'http://apiolaza.net/'
# Basic inside-code template, making
# script self-contained
def inline_template():
template = u'''
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title><!--title--></title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name='author' content='Luis A. Apiolaza' />
<meta name='keywords' content='<!--tags-->' />
<link rel='stylesheet' href='http://apiolaza.net/css/mANDo.css' type='text/css' />
<link rel='stylesheet' href='http://apiolaza.net/css/pygments.css' type='text/css' />
</head>
<body>
<div id='container'>
<div id='page-header'>
<h1><a href='http://apiolaza.net/'>Sketchbook</a></h1>
<div id='page-menu'>
<ul>
<li><a href='http://apiolaza.net/ego-sum.html' title='Ego sum qui sum'>about</a></li>
<li><a href='http://apiolaza.net/asreml-r/' title='asreml-r cookbook'>asreml-r</a></li>
<li><a href='http://quantumforest.com/' title='Quantum Forest blog'>blog</a></li>
<li><a href='http://apiolaza.net/code/' title='software'>code</a></li>
<li><a href='http://apiolaza.net/colophon.html' title='Gory technical details'>colophon</a></li>
<li><a href='http://apiolaza.net/publications.html'>publications</a></li>
<li><a href='http://apiolaza.net/writings/'>writings</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div id='page-meta'>
<!--navbar-->
<p>This page was updated on <!--date--> (NZST) and is tagged
<!--tags-->.</p>
</div>
<div id='page-body'>
<!--body-->
</div>
<div id='footer'>
<p>All bits sowed, harvested and baked in Christchurch, New
Zealand—43º31'S, 172º32'E—by <a href='http://apiolaza.net'>Luis
Apiolaza</a> with
<a href='http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/nz/'>some rights reserved</a>.
A longer blurb and gory technical details can be found in the
<a href='http://apiolaza.net/colophon.html'>colophon</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
'''
return(template)
# In case of using external template file
def read_template(filename = 'page-template.html'):
try:
f = codecs.open(filename, mode = 'r', encoding = 'utf-8')
except IOError:
print 'Template file not found'
sys.exit()
text = f.read()
return(text)
# Obtains body and meta values from single page
def process_page(text):
# Instance of class Markdown with two extensions
md = markdown.Markdown(extensions = ['meta', 'codehilite', 'footnotes'])
body = md.convert(text)
meta = md.Meta
return([body, meta])
# Combines body, meta information and template
def build_page(body, meta, template):
for key in meta.keys():
lookfor = '<!--' + key + '-->'
template = template.replace(lookfor, meta[key][0])
template = template.replace('<!--body-->', body)
return(template)
# Creates location bar
def location(filename, base_path, site_path):
full_name = os.path.abspath(filename)
base_length = len(base_path)
nav = u'<p>Document tree: <a href="' + site_path + u'">home</a>'
if full_name.find(base_path) >=0:
rel_path = full_name[base_length:-5] + 'html'
rel_path_parts = rel_path.rsplit('/')
else:
print 'File is not in site folder'
sys.exit()
for i in range(len(rel_path_parts)):
nav = nav + u' « ' + u'<a href="' + \
(site_path + u'/'.join(rel_path_parts[:1+i])) + \
u'">' + rel_path_parts[i] + u'</a>'
nav = nav + '</p>'
return(nav)
# Writes page encoded as utf8
def write_page(page, name):
(root, ext) = os.path.splitext(name)
newname = root + '.html'
f = codecs.open(newname, 'w', encoding = 'utf8')
f.write(page)
return()
# Help function
def usage():
print 'Usage:'
print 'python publon.py -d file.markdown (draft default) OR'
print 'python publon.py -p file.markdown (publish)'
return()
# Dictionary defining Castilian replacements
castilian = {u'á': 'á', u'é': 'é', u'í': 'í',
u'ó': 'ó', u'ú': 'ú', u'ñ': 'ñ',
u'¿': '¿', u'¡': '¡', u'ü': 'ü'}
# Convert castilian code to html entities
def convert_castilian(text, dictionary):
for key in dictionary:
text = text.replace(key, dictionary[key])
return(text)
if __name__ == '__main__':
# Processing command line options and arguments
try:
opts, args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], 'dp', ['draft', 'publish'])
except getopt.GetoptError, err:
print 'Error detected: ', err
usage()
sys.exit()
# Reading file
filename = args[0]
try:
f = codecs.open(filename, mode = 'r', encoding = 'utf-8')
except IOError:
print 'Markdown file not found'
sys.exit()
text = f.read()
html, meta = process_page(text)
template = inline_template()
navbar = location(filename, base_path, site_path)
meta[u'navbar'] = [navbar]
page = build_page(html, meta, template)
write_page(page, filename)And that’s it.
© 2024 Palimpsest
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑