MATLAB and Python Recipes for Earth Sciences

One of my professors at the University of Karlsruhe once said, “No book is as good as its next edition.” In fact, the second edition of my first book, MATLAB Recipes for Earth Sciences (MRES), was published just a few months after the first edition because, naturally, I discovered the first errors as soon as I held the first printed copy in my hands. Here are the corrections for MRES (6th Edition) and PRES (2nd Edition), along with links to the corrected Supplementary Materials. Continue reading “Corrections for the 6th Edition of MRES and the 2nd Edition of PRES”

Computer code is becoming increasingly complex, making it difficult for beginners to understand. Minimal coding offers a possible solution. Here is an example of minimal code for a periodogram. Continue reading “Minimal Coding: Periodogram in Just Two Lines of MATLAB Code”

Computer code is becoming increasingly complex, making it difficult for beginners to understand. Minimal coding offers a possible solution. Here is an example of minimal code for a principal component analysis. Continue reading “Minimal Coding: PCA in Just Three Lines of MATLAB Code”

In spectrometry—for example, in remote sensing—Gaussian filters or, because they are believed to cause less distortion, Savatzky-Golay filters are often used to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of spectra. Read here to find out how to do it better.
Continue reading “Popular Filters in Spectrometry Revisited”

AI changed everything, also the way we search for literature, create figures, and write summaries. Teaching a course on collecting, processing and presenting geoscientific information and having published two editions of a book on the topic, it was time for a change. And two new books. Continue reading “Collecting, Processing, and Presenting in the Age of AI”

When I show my students that, contrary to expectations, the sine of pi in MATLAB or Python is not 0 but approximately 1.2246e-16, I usually see looks of astonishment on their faces. However, this result is not incorrect; rather, it follows the rules of floating-point arithmetic. Continue reading “Why is the Sine of Pi is Not Zero in MATLAB or Python?”

Can you still run the computer code you wrote back in the 1990s? How would you go about finding where you saved the code? On a 3.5-inch floppy disk—great! But now, you no longer have a drive to read the files on the disk. Continue reading “The Sustainability of Scientific Information”

After the final exam for a required bachelor’s-level course on book Collecting, Processing, and Presentation, a small group of students approached me with an intriguing request. They wanted to know if I would teach another course within the bachelor’s program. I was taken aback by their enthusiasm and asked, “Would you like another course, or would it be better not to?” Continue reading “Be a Better Writer and Presenter – The Launch of a New Course!”