Hi! I'm Tommy Tang
I am a bioinformatician/computational biologist with six years of wet lab experience and over 12 years of computation experience. I will help you to learn computational skills to tame astronomical data and derive insights. Check out the resources I offer below and sign up for my newsletter!
From Wet Lab to Code: Why Biologists Should Embrace Data and AI (But Carefully)
Hi Bioinformatics lovers, How are you doing? It is April, but it still feels like winter here in Boston. It makes us warm that we hosted Josh Starmer (you should go and check out his Statquest YouTube video on statistics and machine learning) at our home. I even got his "The StatQuest Illustrated Guide to Neural Networks and AI" book signed by him! Our kids had a lot of fun playing UNO with him. Tripple BAM Okay, let's dive into our topic today: Learn coding and AI. I used to be just like...
This Bioinformatics Mistake Costs Labs Thousands (But You Can Avoid It)
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Tommy here. Welcome, all the new subscribers! Today's newsletter is a little late. I usually write it the day before and send it out early Saturday morning. The previous week and coming weeks are super busy, and I have a presentation every week.I still get nervous when I give a presentationEven after 17 years in the US. And it is NORMAL. Okay, let's dive into today's topic. The communication between Bioinformatician and wet lab scientists. Avoid This Costly Lab...
GSEA Demystified: How to Make Sense of Gene Set Enrichment Analysis
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, I post a long post on Linkedin every day. I then pick the one with the most views and expand it to this newsletter. It is surprising to me that the GSEA post gets the most impressions, although the method was published over 10 years ago. I am a data scientist, and I use data to guide my decisions:) So, let's learn more about it! If you've ever worked with RNA-seq data, you've probably been asked to perform Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA). It is one of the most...
The Secret to Recreating Any Bioinformatics Figure (It’s easier than You Think)
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Tommy here. I want to teach you the fundamentals so you understand how to solve a problem from the ground up! The other day, I was on Reddit and saw someone ask how to generate the figure below. Let me give you some general principles for approaching this type of problem. How to Recreate Bioinformatics Figures Have you ever seen a great figure in a paper and wondered how to make something similar? The key is to break it down step by step before you start coding....
Learn to Fish: Mastering Matrices for Bioinformatics
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Tommy here. The purpose of this newsletter is simple: teach you how to fish, not just hand you fish. There are so many concepts I wish I had learned differently. Let’s break them down in a way that makes sense. 1. Common statistical tests are just linear models Many statistical tests—like t-tests and ANOVA—are just special cases of linear models. Understanding this will change how you see statistics. Check out this great resource:Tests as Linear Models 2. Matrix...
How I Would Learn Bioinformatics From Scratch 12 Years Later: A Roadmap
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, First of all, thanks to all the subscribers and I hope you get value from this newsletter. I want to shout out to Krittiyabhorn (Namthip), a PhD student in Thailand. Her journey should be an inspiration for all of you. Just get started! read her post here. And make sure you check out her blog posts too. They are all well-written and attending to details. The best way to learn is to "just play around". Unfortunately, many of the students just do not get started....
The Bioinformatics Tool You’re Using Might Be a Waste of Time – Here’s Why
Hello, Bioinformatics lovers and new subscribers, Tommy here. It is March, can you believe it? Boston had heavy snow last week and we finally got a little warmer. The snow is finally melting! Spring is near, I guess. It is my pleasure to distribute my bioinformatics knowledge through this newsletter. btw, I am adding video tutorials replicating the genomics paper in this playlist. Remember 1% better a day, that's a lot of progress in a year! If you find it helpful, kindly forward it to your...
Why I told a conference organizer I'm NOT an AI expert
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, I told a conference organizer that I do not consider myself an expert in AI, and she was surprised. AI is a buzzword word and it is spreading like wildfire in our lives (I can not live without ChatGPT) But bioinformatics existed before AI is cool. Most of my daily work is: formulating the biological question. (This is the hardest) finding the right data to answer it. if no such data is available, work with the wet lab team to generate them after getting the data,...
The Hardest Part of Bioinformatics? an under-rated skill you will learn in this newsletter
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Another week passed by. I often feel how time flies. When I look at how fast my three kids grow, I realize how "old" I became. whew...I will turn 40 next year! I started learning bioinformatics at 28. The other day I went to a Chinese restaurant and got this fortune cookie message: Every once in a while, we all need the encouragement I think it is awesome to be a cheerleader for those who want to learn bioinformatics. I knew I needed it when I started. Technical...
How Unrelated Skills Shaped My Bioinformatics Career (You Won’t Expect This)
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Tommy here again. Do you feel eager to receive my emails on Saturdays? At least, it now become my habit. I will open the email and fire it up. Today, I will share how seemingly unrelated skills shaped my bioinformatics career. ( I will have all my week's long posts linked in the end too). I never set out to be a bioinformatician. In fact, I started my career at the bench, pipetting away in a wet lab, studying epigenetics in cancer. Back then, I had no idea that a...
I am a bioinformatician/computational biologist with six years of wet lab experience and over 12 years of computation experience. I will help you to learn computational skills to tame astronomical data and derive insights. Check out the resources I offer below and sign up for my newsletter!