Summer brings not only high temperatures but also a season full of apéros. If you're unfamiliar with the term, it's a cultural tradition in Switzerland, Italy, France, and a couple of other countries, where people gather for drinks and snacks before dinner. Typically, you'll sip on wine or beer while nibbling on items like chips, olives, or peanuts. Well, the other day, I had some peanuts on my table and found myself wondering ...

While reading a book about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, I had a realization. To provide some context: he was a brilliant physicist who, despite never receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics, made groundbreaking contributions to particle physics, nuclear physics, and astrophysics. One detail that particularly struck me was his 1930 paper (10.1103/PhysRev.35.562) discussing Paul Dirac's proposition that ...

I have to admit that history has never been my favorite subject. Back in school, I struggled to remember key dates, which seemed to be the main focus, despite the fact that I've always found it easy to recall birthdays or stories people share. However, I've recently come to appreciate history from a different perspective: it's actually a great source of data for analysis ...

While exploring new ways of visualizing data, I recently stumbled upon an interesting circular chart. At first glance, it looked like a colorful flower, but it wasn't quite like anything I'd seen before. This chart is known as a coxcomb diagram. I began to search for its origins, because the name didn't ring any bells, and that's when I encountered the story of Florence Nightingale and her pioneering work in data visualization ...

Discovering arXiv (pronounced “archive”) is a significant step in the life of a scientist. At some point, often as a student, you maybe first realize that journal articles describe in greater detail what a textbook might sometimes only briefly touch on. And later on, as a researcher, staying up to date in your field means more than reading these journal articles. You need access to ideas as they're being developed. That's where arXiv comes in ...

If you studied physics, like I did, you likely began your academic journey with a semester of classical mechanics. To analyze the motion of objects, we always followed the same steps: identifying all the forces at play, applying the well-known \(F=ma\) equation, breaking the system down into chosen coordinates, and deriving the equation of motion ...

I really like to read. That being said, I make no claim as to which books should or shouldn't be read, nor how many should be read. I just wanted to state this fact. And among the many works I have read, several stand out as personal favorites. I like the adventures of Alexandre Dumas, particularly Les Trois Mousquetaires and Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, which transport readers into a world of bravery for the former ...

When I started my second year of my Bachelor's studies, I suddenly had to write scientific reports every week. I remember being in the lab on Mondays to collect measurements, and having to submit a four-pages report on Thursdays. The reports at that time were perhaps not the best, but it was for sure a first step in the process of writing about a research topic ...

I took the opportunity in a previous post to summarize under a couple of dates the history of neutrinos. There is another aspect that I very much like about neutrinos, which makes them so unique. Let me start by a small reminder. Neutrinos are neutral leptons with an extremely small mass compared to other particles. Due to their inherent properties, their interactions occur exclusively through the weak force ...

I already mentioned in a previous post that web development has its own Three Musketeers, with HTML, CSS, JS and PHP taking the main roles. It turns out that I'd like to introduce another character. While I could stretch the analogy further by referencing Raoul de Bragelonne, a figure who enters the story 20 years later, I'll resist the temptation to overdo it. This new addition has a unique quality ...

It's been just over ten years now that I started my bachelor's degree in physics. I remember quite vividly my first semester at the university: timidly meeting new people, keeping up with the exercises, working on complex assignments. Those early days were a whirlwind of learning and adapting. But not just to the academic environment, also to the tools we needed for our studies ...

Ever seen these cool-looking diagrams that show flows of energy, resources, or costs with thick, colorful arrows on the internet? These diagrams are known as Sankey diagrams. They originated in the late 19th century, named after Irish engineer Captain Matthew Henry Phineas Riall Sankey, who first used them in 1898 to illustrate the energy efficiency of steam engines ...

Haikus are now known worldwide. While their structure is becoming widely understood, and probably no longer needs an introduction, I wanted to highlight a few specific features this short Japanese poem format has. Haikus are notably concise, composed of exactly 17 syllables arranged in a 5-7-5 pattern. This ternary rhythm is essential to their form. In terms of language and themes, haikus also rely on two key elements ...

Data should always be carefully and thoughtfully presented. Although this rule seems quite general, it is backed by a very logical rationale. Plots should serve as a direct and clear way to communicate a message. And therefore it is important to select the most effective settings to convey this message. There are right and wrong choices to make when it comes to data representation. And pastamarkers is a delightfully good one ...

If there is one thing that fits in with the Halloween theme, apart from ghosts and vampires, it's neutrinos. Well, one could argue that dark matter would actually fit better, but I needed an excuse to talk about neutrinos and their very interesting history, so neutrinos it is. Positioned among the leptons in the Standard Model (SM), neutrinos are unique. They have an extremely small mass compared to other particles ...

About three months ago, I began coding my own website. Like any beginner, I started reading documentations and following tutorials to get the basics down. Soon, I was learning a whole new set of concepts and languages essential to web development. And I quickly realized that web development has its own Three Musketeers*. First, there's HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the foundation, responsible for content and structure ...

My personal data analysis journey started with Pandas dataframes. Being easy to manipulate in Python code, it enables further data analysis while also allowing you to make adjustments should the data change over time. So when I heard about SQL (Structured Query Language), I thought it was yet another similar way of analyzing dataframes. Turns out I was wrong, and it is slightly more complex than that ...

matplotlib is a library that I've been extensively using throughout my PhD. Coming from a place where TCanvas, TLegend and TH1F were the norm, I can tell you that this library is particularly straightforward. Don't get me wrong: it is by no means perfect, but it does contain some features that can be used to make plots more enjoyable to read (though the lack of default LaTeX font will always be a disappointment) ...

Have I ever said that I'm a plant lover? Not the kind of plant lover that would go in a plant shop and buy everything, but more the kind that would let the plants grow starting from seeds. It can be reduced to an input/process/output system. You have seeds. You put them in soil, water them regularly and let them enjoy the warmth of the sun. And a couple of days later or a few months after, you have a plant ...

ROOT is an open-source framework designed for data analysis, particularly in high-energy physics, but it's also used in other fields. While it's a very powerful tool, ROOT can be challenging to work with due to its complexity. A relatively new feature in ROOT has been introduced that combines the efficiency and power of ROOT with the ease and simplicity of Pandas dataframes: RDataFrame...

I recently made a cool discovery about Git that changed the way I can manage my projects: push-to-deploy. Up until now, I mostly saw Git as just a way to synchronize my local projects with GitHub or GitLab (basically version control and collaboration). My usual routine was to initialize a repository on my local machine, link it to a remote, and start pushing changes. That was the extent of what Git meant to me ...