Helping the rest of us

embrace the power of R

Think you know what an R user looks like? I'm probably not what you have in mind.

I'm not a hardcore quant (my PhD is in anthropology). I'm not a coder ready to jump on you for any small mistake.

I want to help others avoid the pain that I went through learning R.

A teacher at heart (shoutout to my former second grade students), I make R less scary and more fun (yes, fun).

I first used R in 2015 at a workshop at the American Evaluation Association conference. I was intrigued, but, since my co-workers at the time used Excel and SPSS, I let my newly learned skills lapse.

In 2016, entering the world of consulting, I decided to give R another shot. I jumped back in, using free online resources to restart my R journey. I taught myself enough that I decided to give R a shot on a project I was working on. I got a few steps in, hit a roadblock, and had to go back to Excel.

A few weeks later, I tried R again on another project. Same result. I followed this pattern for several months, optimistically thinking I was ready to use R for a project, only to find my skills weren’t quite there yet.

It’s a common story among those of us who teach ourselves R. Without a guide, we waste time going down the wrong path without realizing where we’re going.