Would you pay this much for the country’s “best” license plate?
TL:DR Mongolia auctions off a “lucky number” license plate and the bids reach 427.45 million MNT (Mongolian Tugriks) in less than three hours. That’s $150,035.10 USD at current exchange rates.
Numbers mean a lot to most Mongolians. Generally, 1, 3, 8, and 9 are considered “lucky” numbers. Mongolian phone numbers have 8 digits, and the first 4 of these numbers can tell you a lot about who is calling you. So-called “lucky” phone numbers beginning with 99 or 88 regularly sell for anywhere from $1,000 (9999-XXXX) up to $20,000 or more for the most elite (9911-XXXX). These phone numbers are…
They join Colab and Deepnote with a custom Jupyter notebook UI
Note: This release seems to be very much a work in progress. Check out the comparison to Colab and Deepnote at the bottom for details.
On February 11, 2020, Paperspace rolled out their reimagined cloud-based notebook product with a new IDE and file browser. Paperspace has offered one-click Jupyter notebooks since 2018 through its Gradient product. What has changed is that the default view for notebooks is now their own custom IDE user interface, similar to what Google Colab and Deepnote offer.
Before this update, you chose your base environment with a list of pre-installed packages and a machine type…
From monitoring agriculture to fighting government waste, remote sensing has huge potential in Mongolia.
As the least densely populated sovereign nation (2 inhabitants per km2), Mongolia has no lack of wide-open spaces. Just a few kilometers outside the capital city, Ulaanbaatar, you will find vast expanses of steppe dotted with sheep, goats, cows, and the occasional horse herd. But this space also has a downside.
Simply put, driving around Mongolia is hard. Mongolia’s paved road network is mostly limited to connecting Ulaanbaatar with provincial capitals. Less than 25% of Mongolia’s road network is paved. This creates challenges for Mongolia’s government, civil society organizations, and private businesses. Obtaining accurate information about activities outside the capital…
Power up the almost useless code suggestions in JupyterLab
As a data scientist, you almost surely use a form of Jupyter Notebooks. Hopefully, you have moved over to the goodness of JupyterLab with its integrated sidebar, tabs, and more. When it first launched in 2018, JupyterLab was great but felt it was missing some things.
Now you can add a visual debugger and there is even a library called nbdev that allows you to author full Python packages and push them to PyPI. JupyterLab has become a complete IDE for data scientists. But one thing was still sub-optimal until recently, code completions.
Trying to use the built-in code completion…
Build a data science app in minutes, and deploy it to the web in one click.
Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with Anvil, I just love their product.
As more data scientists enter organizations around the world, most will find a very different work environment than what they may have dreamed about at Netflix, Facebook, or Google. At these companies, data scientists are supported by data engineers, machine learning engineers, application developers, and dev-ops specialists. Instead, they will probably find themselves working in a small team, or even by themselves. This poses major issues when a data scientist wants to get their insights, models, and even products out of Jupyter and into production.
Anvil fills in these…
2020 Parliamentary Election
The current election saw a switch back to the block voting system used in 1992 and 2008. This system has both positives and negatives, and this system has much larger election districts than the previous single-member districts of the 2016 election. This allows us to more easily analyze the districts with the available data.
To put all of the data together and make it user friendly, I built Songolt, an interactive data explorer that allows the reader to see key indicators of election districts. The indicators covered in the app include:
- Population indicators: population, household size, herder percent, age group…
Улаанбаатар хотын агаарын чанарыг харьцуулах апп
TL:DR Agaar.Mongol.ai нь Улаанбаатар хотын агаарын чанарыг өмнөх он жилүүдийн байдлыг харж, харьцуулах боломжийг олгож байгаа анхны Mongol.ai-ийн вэб аппликэйшн юм. Та энэхүү програмыг дараах хаягаар орон ашиглах боломжтой — http://agaar.mongol.ai
Улаанбаатар хотын агаарын чанар муу байгаа нь хүн бүхний зовниж байгаа асуудал бөгөөд өвлийн улиралд Улаанбаатар хот хамгийн муу агаарын чанартай хотуудын нэгт багтдаг. 2019 онд Монголын засгийн газар нь түүхий нүүрс түлэхийг хориглосон. Хэдийгээр үр дүн нь нааштай байсан ч агаарын бохирдлыг бүрэн шийдвэрлэх нь амаргүй даваа юм.
Бид Agaar.Mongol.ai-г олон нийтэд нээлттэй байлгаж, мөн энэхүү вэб аппликэйшнээр агаарын чанарын өмнөх он жилүүдийн мэдээллийг харж, хялбар аргаар харьцуулан…
An app to compare Ulaanbaatar air quality
TL:DR Agaar.Mongol.ai is a free web app to view historic air quality data for Ulaanbaatar. It is the first app released by Mongol.ai. You can access the application at https://agaar.mongol.ai!
It’s no secret that poor air quality is a major challenge in Ulaanbaatar. Winter months can be so bad the city is regularly in the top 5 cities with the worst air quality. In 2019 the Mongolian government banned the burning of raw coal in Ulaanbaatar in an effort to reduce air pollution. Initial reports as to the effectiveness of this ban have been positive. …
4 different sources, 2 different methods
Air pollution is a big issue during the winter months in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The effects of air pollution are quite severe, with those living in the most polluted areas suffering from lowered lung function, increased rates of respiratory infection, and shortened lifespans. In an attempt to solve this issue, the government has been focusing on the source of air pollution, the peri-urban ger districts surrounding the city center. In these areas, houses burn coal for both cooking and heat.
Beginning in May 2019, burning raw coal in Ulaanbaatar was made illegal. To replace the fuel the government coordinated the manufacture…
