Baby eats solids

Introducing solids: the cheatsheet

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Introducing solids to babies Solids are an important milestone for babies. Some will love it, some will be a bit reticent at the beginning. So there are 50-50 chances to have a successful food diversification start. Having 2 kids, I can tell you that we experienced both situations: Bianca gave us signs that she’s ready to eat around 6 months of age, but she wasn’t so thrilled: With Giulia it was totally different: she sat in an upright position at 5 months of age and was reaching for our food even earlier. She gave us many signs that she’s ready to eat. We started diversification with her a few days after she celebrated her 5 months birthday: HOW? You have to know that there are 2 main ways to give baby food: baby-led weaning (BLW): solids are introduced as finger food; it is recommended to start with this method when babies are 6 months old or older; puree   (Note: I participate in the affiliate amazon program. This post may contain affiliate links from Amazon or other publishers I trust (at no extra cost to you). I may receive a small commission when you buy using my links, this helps to keep the blog alive! See disclosure for details.)   Of course, you can do a mix of the two. This is what I did. I used a pressure cooker to soften the food and if I decided to give purees, I used a fork to smash the food until soft with no or small lumps. If you don’t have a pressure cooker yet, I recommend this one, we’re using it on a daily basis. WHEN? Different countries have different recommendations related to when to start giving food to your baby. My Data Science intuition tell me that the 4-6 months milestone is positively correlated with how much maternity leave a parent can take. For example, when we were based in Ireland, the general advise was to give food to babies starting with the 4 months of age (I believe that this is related to parents going back to work earlier). Now we’re in Romania and here you can have a long maternity leave (it’s paid by the Government and you can take up to 2 years). So here, the paediatricians advise to start with solids at 6 months of age. HOW MUCH? I followed a super easy rule for both Bianca and Giulia: gradual increase of food: started with a spoon and reached a cup at each meal; number of meals by age: 4-6 Months old: 1 meal / day; 7 Months old: 2 meals / day; 8-9 Months old: 3 meals / day; 10-12 Months old: 3 meals + 1 snack / day; 1 Year+ : 3 meals + 2 snacks / day; WHAT? I’ll start this section with what NOT to give the baby: salts, sugar and honey are forbidden in the first 12 months. 4-6 Months old – 1 meal / day : LUNCH: Vegetables + Proteins Vegetables: sweet potato, parsley, zucchini, carrot, parsnip, green beans, pumpkin, bell pepper, onion, garlic, leek; Proteins:  homemade cheese, chicken, turkey, quail, rabbit, beef, egg (hard boiled); Others: Olive oil, parsley leaves, lovage, dill; 7 Months old – 2 meals / day : BREAKFAST: Fruits LUNCH: Vegetables + Proteins Fruits: apple, pear, avocado, apricot, peach, nectarine, plum, banana, blueberrie­s, watermelon; Vegetables: same as month above; Proteins: same as month above; Others: caraway, cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, thyme, oregano,inactive yeast 8-9 Months old – 3 meals / day : BREAKFAST: Fruits LUNCH: Vegetables + Proteins DINNER: Vegetables, Cereals, Dairy products Fruits: same as months above plus grapes, cherries, sour cherries, papaya, dehydrated dates, raisins, kaki, mango, cranberries Vegetables: same as months above plus red beets, green peas, broccoli, cauliflower, red lentil, green lentil, celery, lettuce, endive; Proteins: same as month above plus yogurt, butter, sour cream, liver, white fish (trout, cod, perch, hake, gray mullet, dorada); Cereals/ Pseudocereals: millet, rice, bulgur, couscous, oat, barley;   10-12 Months old – 3 meals + 1 snack / day : BREAKFAST: Fruits LUNCH: Vegetables + Proteins SNACK: Fruits DINNER: Vegetables, Cereals, Dairy products Fruits: same as months above plus quince, figs, kiwi, chestnuts, pineapple, strawberries, raspberry, blackberries, orange, lemon, grapefruit, pomelo, pomegranate in a smoothie, goji, olives, nuts – peanuts – cashew –  pistachio- almond crushed; Vegetables: same as months above plus tomato, aubergine, spinach, mushroom, wild garlic, turnips, white potato, asparagus, cucumber; Proteins: same as month above plus  ricotta, mozzarella, mascarpone, kefir, pork, mutton, goose, duck, lamb; Cereals/ Pseudocereals: same as month above ; 1 Year – 3 meals + 2 snacks / day : BREAKFAST: Fruits LUNCH: Vegetables + Proteins SNACK: Fruits DINNER: Vegetables, Cereals, Dairy products SNACK: Vegetables Fruits: everything ; Vegetables: same as months above radishes, peas, artichoke, sorrel, cabbage, nettles; Proteins: same as month above plus fish, cheese, cream cheese, cheddar, parmesan, edam, gouda, svaiter, grana padano, emmental, pecorino, goats cheese; Cereals/ Pseudocereals: everything ; WHAT? I’ll start this section with what NOT to give the baby: salts, sugar and honey are forbidden in the first 12 months.   Get a long bib that attaches to the highchair and let the baby explore the food, it will be fun!     This is a personal blog. My opinion on what I share with you is that “All models are wrong, but some are useful”. Improve the accuracy of any model I present and make it useful!

Clean Code

17 Clean Code standards to adopt NOW!

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You are here because you code, but how professional does your code look? Professional programmers think of systems as stories to be told rather than programs to be written. I have listed 17 important clean coding standards into 4 different sections. Make sure you bookmark the page and share it with your colleagues: Naming: The name of a variable, function, or class should answer all the big questions. It should tell you why it exists, what it does, and how it is used. Best to use Computer Science terms (algorithm names, pattern names, math etc.) wherever possible. Otherwise, stick with application domain terms. Do not try to be cute or funny when naming. Spend your time wisely when trying to find the correct name. Shorter names are generally better than longer ones, as long as they are clear. Add enough context to a name, but NO MORE. Functions and Methods FUNCTIONS SHOULD SERVE ONE PURPOSE. They should serve it well with NO SIDE EFFECTS. This means one level of abstraction per function. Guide: – They can’t be divided reasonably into sections. – They can’t do anything hidden. If you must have some coupling, then you should AT LEAST make it clear in the name (ex: serializeAndSetContext(…), startThreadAndLogWork(…)). Although this isn’t that pretty. Should be small. Hardly ever longer than 30 lines. Blocks within IF, ELSE, WHILE, FOR should be small, one line in an ideal world. And that should probably be a function call. The indent size within a function shouldn’t be greater than 2, rarely 3. If you come up with 3 levels, first consider if it is possible to break into another function. Arguments are hard for testing. Ideal number of arguments for a function is niladic(0). Next comes one monadic, followed closely by dyadic. More than 3 arguments require special treatment, most likely those arguments need to exist in a class of their own. In professional programming, you have only 2 reasons for function arguments: asking a question or operating on arguments (transforming it, returning a dependent result). In professional programming, flag arguments are bad practice. Passing a bool into a function proclaims that the function does more than one thing. It does one thing if the flag is true and another if the flag is false. In monadic argument functions, we should keep a verb phrase + name pair: download(object), convertToString(date) etc. Comments Comments are, at best, a necessary evil. Most of them are excuses/ justification for bad code. C. Martin: “Comments usually compensate failure to express ourselves in code.“ Clear and expressive code with few comments is far superior to cluttered and complex code with lots of comments. TODO comments are acceptable. But the TODO should be addressed when possible. Module formatting Use the newspaper metaphor for source code: You read it vertically. At the top you expect a headline that will tell you what the story is about and allows you to decide whether it is something you want to read. If one function calls another, they should be vertically close, and the caller should be above the callee, if at all possible. Surround assignment operators with white space to accentuate them.   (Note: I participate in the affiliate amazon program. This post may contain affiliate links from Amazon or other publishers I trust (at no extra cost to you). I may receive a small commission when you buy using my links, this helps to keep the blog alive! See disclosure for details.)   Want to learn more? Grab your Clean Code Handbook: Clean Code   This is a personal blog. My opinion on what I share with you is that “All models are wrong, but some are useful”. Improve the accuracy of any model I present and make it useful!

DELL EMC Data Science Certified Associate

The perfect Data Science Certification for a Junior Data Scientist

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Starting with 2019, the interest in Data Science education and getting an accreditation skyrocketed. Have a look below at the Google trend of the two search terms: Data Science course vs Data Science certificate:   This shows that many people are looking to get formal training on Data Science.    Generally speaking, a technical certification will be somewhat attractive on a CV, but a certification alone will not secure you a role. The majority of Data Science interviews will have at least one technical test and multiple discussions. Some interviewers might even question you more on the topics of the Certification.  To boost my confidence in my Data Science skills, I also decided to pursue a Data Science Certification. I did my “Google research” and I was pleasantly surprised by the results: DELL EMC program scored high in the top Data Science certifications search. This meant for me, as a Dell employee, that I was able to access multiple learning materials to prepare for the exam.    Structure Dell offers a two-level Data science certification: Associate and Specialist level. The Associate level exam consist of 60 questions and you have 90 minutes to answer them.  The minimum score to pass the exam is 63 and the topics assessed are: MapReduce (15%) MapReduce framework and its implementation in Hadoop Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) Yet Another Resource Negotiator (YARN) Hadoop Ecosystem and NoSQL (15%) Pig Hive NoSQL HBase Spark Natural Language Processing (NLP) (20%) NLP and the four main categories of ambiguity Text Preprocessing Language Modeling Social Network Analysis (SNA) (23%) SNA and Graph Theory Communities Network Problems and SNA Tools Data Science Theory and Methods (15%) Simulation Random Forests Multinomial Logistic Regression and Maximum Entropy Data Visualization (12%) Perception and Visualization Visualization of Multivariate Data I recently (in January 2022) took my Associate level one and I am currently studying for the Specialist level, so it is an ideal time to write about my learning and exam experiences. Learning The official website page for the exam and course info is this. Here you will find details about the On Demand classes they offer, exam link and practice tests. You can also see more sample questions here and additional online practice tests. The Data Science and Big Data Analytics course prepares you for the Data Scientist Associate v2 (DCA-DS) Certification. Once you pass the exam, you receive a Dell Technologies Certified Associate(DCA-DS) Certification. Why is the Data Scientist Associate v2 (DCA-DS) a good certification for a junior data scientist: Going through the topics included in the material will give a good foundation of data science terminologies. It gives an intro into what big data is, the most basic algorithms, and an understanding of the responsibilities of a Data Scientist and the data science lifecycle. Learning all of this will enable immediate and effective participation in big data and other analytics projects. You’ll be hands-on Hadoop (including Pig, Hive, and HBase), Natural Language Processing, Social Network Analysis, Simulation, Random Forests, Multinomial Logistic Regression, and Data Visualization. The labs will prepare you to do data processing, apply algorithms and run data visualization in R. It will empower you to keep on studying and move forward to get the next level certificate as DCA-DS Certification is a prerequisite for DCS-DS. The Advanced Methods in Data Science and Big Data Analytics course prepares you for Specialist – Data Scientist, Advanced Analytics Version 1.0 (DCS-DS) Certification.    (Note: I participate in the affiliate amazon program. This post may contain affiliate links from Amazon or other publishers I trust (at no extra cost to you). I may receive a small commission when you buy using my links, this helps to keep the blog alive! See disclosure for details.)   If you don’t have availability to sit in a class for a full week (8  hours a day), you can study for the exam at your own pace. Dell Emc published the below book to help you prepare for the exam. It is rated very high and it’s now discounted on Amazon:   When are you getting one of this?   If this is not motivational enough, I’ll leave below an interesting Ted Talk on the influence of social network  (one of the topics of the course / exam) and you’ll see why Data Science is so cool:       This is a personal blog. My opinion on what I share with you is that “All models are wrong, but some are useful”. Improve the accuracy of any model I present and make it useful!

python pandas junior data scientist

Crash guide on how to learn Python if you already know R

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I guess you’re already familiar with R and have a sexy Data Scientist job but you’ve heard the cool kids in the industry are also using Python. I said also, because as you can see from people’s job titles, Reddit ,LinkedIn and so on, there are plenty Data Scientists that use both. You have probably figured that I’m an R enthusiast myself. I realized a long time ago that I also have to learn Python (I wanna be a cool kid as well). I struggled at first. Why? My current and previous roles were very much R based. Nobody used Python. 1st try: I knew it’s easier to move into this direction together with the team, so I proposed that all 5 of us (Data Scientists) on the team go ahead and take a Python course. One colleague was on board. In the summer of 2018 we went and sat in on an in class Python training . The training wasn’t too bad, but it was general Python programming, not Data Science specific. In order to get the diploma we had to do an assignment, so we did a Data Science one and started discovering a bit of Python for Data Science. I can tell you that it was a bit painful, using pandas was just weird. I like how this guy describes the experience in the Reddit post below: This is pretty much the whole 2018 Python experience that I had. And I stopped. 2nd try: In 2019 I went on maternity leave to take care of Baby B (my 1st born). I felt like it was the perfect time to really learn Python for Data Science and put it on my CV. I bought a bunch of books. I also enlisted to a number of really good Pluralsight courses. Pluralsight is golden for a Data Scientist / ML Engineer etc: (Note: I participate in affiliate programs. This post may contain affiliate links from Amazon or other publishers I trust (at no extra cost to you). I may receive a small commission when you buy using my links, this helps to keep the blog alive! See disclosure for details.) Doing Data Science with Python Understanding Machine Learning with Python Pandas Fundamentals Exploring Web Scraping with Python Start a 10-day free trial at Pluralsight – Over 5,000 Courses Available I would say that in 2019 I got a good grasp of how Python works (compared to R): Python is a general programming language, that also knows how to do what R does best 😜: data wrangling, engineering, feature selection, etc and that pandas is trying to copy dplyr; There are many IDEs where you can write and run Python code and that the majority use Jupiter notebook (yuck 🤢); It’s a mess if you don’t know how to use a specific Python version and virtual environments; Python is pretty strong on deep learning, deployment and production of models; 3rd try: In 2021, I went back to work and I jumped on the first Python project in the team. In the meantime, another Data Scientist colleague switched to Python and built a robust neural network project for fraud. It was the perfect opportunity for me to put my new skills to test and see if my efforts in learning Python are paying off. They have: I was able to Validate the Fraud Project and give some recommendations. For every big project we have a Development and a Validation part – so that at least 2 Data Scientists are involved in one project. Was I able to develop my own project in Python? No, because I went on maternity leave (again 😅). 4th try: We’re now in 2022 and I think I found something that is super helpful in switching to Python: RStudio is now home for both R and Python (hurray!! ). How cool is this? When I found out, I jumped straight into updating my RStudio in order to be able to run Python. For the initial setup, just follow the official RStudio guidelines. Do I think this helped? Oh yeah – it helped me a lot. So much so that I even decided to even start blogging about my mummy & Data science experience. Python does not look so scary anymore: One major difference is that now you have to “pip install” your libraries in the Terminal , not in the Console / Script, the way you would do it in R – not a big deal. So, RStudio as the IDE + a personal project = the way to go. You know what they don’t say – 4th time is a charm :). I can thank RStudio for making me fall in love with Python. Now I’m trying to learn OOP for Data Science. I’ll update you soon! This is a personal blog. My opinion on what I share with you is that “All models are wrong, but some are useful”. Improve the accuracy of any model I present and make it useful!

Sleep training works

2 successful sleep training methods to try

3 Comments / Baby, Cristina, Featured, Sleep / By /

The most important success factor of sleep training is the self soothing amount of time an infant gets Sleep begets sleep says Dr Mark Weissbluth, but in the first 2 weeks of sleep training, the key success factor is the amount of self-soothing time an infant gets. Self-soothing occurs when your baby is able to calm down by themselves and they manage to go to sleep without external help. I’m a mother of 2 and a senior data scientist and I’ll tell you the secret of sleep training: the longer your baby spends self-soothing, the more guaranteed it is for sleep training to succeed. This is the main insight I unlocked from the sleep training data I was able to collect during the 2 sleep training cycles I have gone through with my babies.   Create your own sleep training survival kit There is a lot of contradictory information about sleep training on the internet. One thing is clear from the get-go: you’re reading this post because you want to have well rested babies. I can help you create your own sleep training survival kit. (Note: I participate in the affiliate amazon program.This post may contain affiliate links from Amazon or other publishers I trust (at no extra cost to you). I may receive a small commission when you buy using my links, this helps to keep the blog alive! See disclosure for details.) I want to share with you 2 sleep recipes that worked for us: 1. Baby B was sleep trained by a sleep consultant. Assisted sleep training at 4 months old using the 1-3-5 minutes interval method, with the help of a Family Sleep Institute Consultant. 2. Baby G was sleep trained by myself (with the full support of husband). Started self-sleep training at 3 months old by allowing her to learn self-soothe. I first let her try to go to sleep by herself early in the morning (nap 1), when she was most rested. She cried quietly for 30 minutes. I had not intervened because I knew she would cry louder. This method was explained by Dr Marc Weissbluth, in his famous book: Similarities of the 2 methods: 2 weeks duration; Allow the baby to learn self-soothing: don’t pick up with baby at the first sound he/she makes; Keep a sleep log (find a free printable and more info on this here); Consider the safe recommendations of American Academy of Pediatrics Safe Sleep for preventing sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS): – Until their first birthday, babies should sleep on their backs at all times—for naps and at night. – Use a firm sleep surface. Follow a sleep routine (read more on this here); Put the baby to bed drowsy but awake (may not always be possible ); Feed only if hungry (to remove the milk – sleep association); Room setup: the nursery was at least 80% dark, temperature of 70 -72 F (21-22 C ) , white noise for the first part of the night (we used ), video and sound baby monitor on (we used BT ); Baby was properly dressed (pajamas + overnight diapers – these are great) + night bag (Slumbersac are one the best we had) Last, but not least, we cat-sleep-trained Tasty and Lestat and left them in the living room. Leave nothing to chance when trying to achieve the ultimate goal: a good night’s sleep. What was different: 1. Sleep consultants recommend starting sleep training at 4 months of age (we did this with our first born, but started at 3 months of age with our youngest baby – based on Dr Marc’s book – Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, 5th Edition: A New Step-by-Step Guide for a Good Night’s Sleep). 2. We started sleep training with the night sleep in baby B’s case. This meant that we used the 1-3-5 minutes interval rule to check and console her if she cried. And yes… she cried. I personally don’t think that there are any babies that do not cry at all during sleep training. With this method, you wait and see if your baby can self soothe. 3. Baby G responded promptly to the sleep training. Normal routine would entail putting her to sleep drowsy but awake. If her immediate reaction was not good (instant crying): I would pick her up, help her calm down and try again, then leave the room and wait for her to fall asleep. Teaching your baby how to fall asleep by themselves is one of the most important life skills that they will learn. You can do this as early as 3 months of age and the result will be amazing: a happy and well rested kid, just like mine.       This is a personal blog. My opinion on what I share with you is that “All models are wrong, but some are useful”. Improve the accuracy of any model I present and make it useful!