Yesterday I entered Italy and left the German-speaking nations behind; or so I thought until I encountered a very strange dialect of German in South Tyrol. My tent finds itself located in Colfosco among the peaks of the Dolomites. I have a nice selection of panoramic photos and drone footage among mountains and a nice hiking tale to tell, but let’s also not forget the drive that brought me here!

The lack of posts in recent days is mostly due to extensive trip preparations in advance of a departure on Saturday, but with most of those complete I can share my exciting plans! A New Drone Naturally this is one of the most exciting parts for me. My other drone, the Parrot Disco, is very large, hard to transport, and requires a lot of space for takeoff.

Despite the Coronavirus situation, crisis, event, or whichever doomsday terminology is currently most appropriate, a handful of countries are reopening their borders cautiously for tourism and unfortunately for them as they lift these restrictions they are likely to see my face at the door. There are of course moral implications to travelling at this time and it’s very easy to engage in cognitive dissonance to justify not missing out on travel a mere three months after widespread lockdown measures.

Those that know me well may know that I err on the side of caution when it comes to things I don’t know; they may also know that I’m not Korean. I usually have a bit of background knowledge about the things I cook, at the very least I have usually eaten the dishes tens of times.

In my brief visit to the South of Germany I did a second drone flight in the area of Neuschwanstein Castle. Without too much history the castle was built in the late 1800s on a rugged hill near the Austrian border in Bavarian Germany. It’s quite a popular tourist landmark given that it’s a very picturesque region set just before the Alps, and has an almost Disney-style appearance.

Today I embarked on the mission of brewing ginger beer! This escapade came about mostly by chance. I say chance but actually I am fully aware of the power modern-day recommender systems much like YouTube uses. I was kindly introduced by YouTube to the following recipe for brewing ginger beer.

Drone flying in Germany can be challenging: finding a spot that isn’t within a Naturschutzgebiet, is 100m from a highway, and isn’t voilating privacy laws leaves little room to fly a device that requires at least an 80m radius to land. But when you do find somewhere it is often rewarding as Germany is surprisingly green and beautiful.

Most people that have had the misfortune of even gently stepping into the world of statistics will have come across p-values. Some may be brave enough to assert that it tells as about the probability of observing data if the null hypothesis is true, but what does it tell us about the alternative hypothesis?

You’ve read tales of cycling, cake, and ginger beer, and thought “that’s all well and good, but I when is he going to explain the definition of a confidence interval?” As a Data Scientist this is a question that genuinely causes me fear. In the world of business confidence intervals (hereby known as CI) appear in things such as A/B testing.

Today Thomas and I embarked on a cycling adventure to the Neanderthal museum. I rounded it off by making some lemon drizzle cake (there is a video!) and then making vegetarian Swedish meatballs for dinner. For those of you who are desperately waiting for some hardcore statistics as I promised in the introduction post then I can only apologise.