Monthly Archives: April 2013

Monad transformers: a cautionary tale

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Brent

When writing the code in my previous post, I wanted to have a monad which combined the ability to generate random numbers with the ability to fail. Naturally, I decided to use RandT Maybe. But when I tried to write … Continue reading →

Posted in haskell | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Random binary trees with a size-limited critical Boltzmann sampler

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Brent

Today I’d like to talk about generating random trees. First, some imports and such (this post is literate Haskell). > {-# LANGUAGE GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving #-} > > module BoltzmannTrees where > > import Control.Applicative > import Control.Arrow ((&&&)) > import Control.Lens … Continue reading →

Posted in combinatorics, haskell, math, species | Tagged , , , , , | 14 Comments

Beeminding for fun and profit

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Brent

I’ve been using Beeminder (which I’ve mentioned once before) for a little over six months now. The verdict? Beeminder has changed my life. That sounds dramatic, but I’m not kidding. I am far more productive than I’ve ever been. I’m … Continue reading →

Posted in grad school, meta | Tagged , , , | 23 Comments