A summer sabbatical

In recent weeks I have been sharing more informal thoughts and in the upcoming weeks, there will be a period of greater radio silence.

After three decades as a professional, I am taking the entire summer off. This will be a chance to intentionally not sit at a desk, stare at a screen, look at my phone, read emails, read articles, and all those other work and personal related activities one does.

Tagged with: Weekly Musings

Producing Alternative Means statistics with SQL

MySQL’s built-in AVG() computes the arithmetic mean — the sum divided by the count. That is the right default for many questions, but it is not always the right measure of central tendency.

Extending MySQL Capabilities with UDFs, Plugins and Components

MySQL offers three different approaches to extending the SQL capabilities with the default product you download and install. These are: User Defined Function (UDF) MySQL Manual MySQL Plugin MySQL Manual MySQL Component MySQL Manual For the purposes of this post I will be using the current LTS version MySQL 8.

Producing One-Sample Z-Test statistics with SQL

The one-sample Z-test determines whether a sample mean differs significantly from a known population mean when the population standard deviation is also known. It is the appropriate test when the population parameters are established — quality control benchmarks, national averages, long-run process measurements — and you want to evaluate whether a new sample is consistent with them.