Jeroen Janssens - How I hacked UMAP and won at a plotting contest | PyData Amsterdam 2024

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In this talk, I’ll share my journey of animating UMAP, a cutting-edge dimensionality reduction algorithm, by visualizing not just its final output but each intermediate step as well. I’ll explain why and how I modified UMAP’s source code, while also demonstrating the use of Polars for data wrangling, Plotnine for visualization, and ffmpeg for animation. The result ultimately earned me a runner-up position in the 2024 Plotnine plotting contest.

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00:00 Welcome!
01:06 Plotnine contest
02:18 Hoi! I'm Jeroen
03:13 Visualizing the behavior of an algorithm
07:58 Keeping track of intermediate predictions
09:23 Tool: UMAP
12:31 Tool: Polars
13:15 Python Polars: The Definitive Guide
13:40 MNIST dataset
14:46 Tool: Plotnine
17:04 Tool: FFmpeg
18:58 Final result
19:38 To conclude
20:40 Q & A