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R for the Rest of Us Podcast Episode 12: Chris Knox

In this episode, I speak with Chris Knox, who is currently the Head of Data Journalism at the New Zealand Herald. Prior to that, he worked at the New Zealand ministry of health, where he led an analytics team focused on New Zealand's COVID response. During our conversation, Chris highlights why he considers R as the optimal tool for data analysis and reporting, especially when dealing with frequently changing data sources and parameters. He also emphasizes the benefits of using R in a...

How to Use GitHub Actions with R to Run Code Automatically

In my course, Using Git and GitHub with R , I talk about GitHub Actions as one of the best reasons to use GitHub. GitHub Actions is a way for you to run code automatically, without you having to touch your computer. Maybe you run a survey and you want to pull the data every day. Or perhaps you want to generate a weekly report. Instead of manually running code in RStudio, you can use GitHub Actions to run this code automatically. Below, I will demonstrate two GitHub Actions: one that imports...

R for the Rest of Us Podcast Episode 11: Garrick Aden-Buie and Travis Gerke

In this episode, Travis Gerke and Garrick Aden-Buie join me to demystify the process behind developing custom packages in R. Travis is the Director of Data Science at The Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium (PCCTC), and Garrick is a Data Science Educator and R developer at R Studio. During the discussion, Travis and Garrick highlight the numerous benefits of having a custom package, including making it easier to access data, automation & documentation of functions, and enhanced...

R for the Rest of Us Podcast Episode 10: Kyle Walker

In this episode, I speak with Kyle Walker, Associate Professor of Geography and Director of the Center for Urban Studies at Texas Christian University. Kyle has developed several packages, but the one we talk about in this chat is called tidycensus. tidycensus allows R users to return Census and ACS data as tidyverse-ready data frames. Kyle had a rough start with R programming and he didn’t want anything to do with it for 3 years. What made him come back to R and become one of its renowned...

R for the Rest of Us Podcast Episode 9: Meghan Harris

In this episode, I speak with Meghan Harris, a data integration specialist at the Primary Care Research Institute, University of Buffalo. There, she brings together data from multiple sources to create insights that benefit people affected by opioid use disorder. Meghan talks about how she uses R to pull data directly from Google Sheets, and highlights the advantages of this workflow as opposed to working on a manually downloaded Google Sheets file. Fun fact: When Meghan is not creating data...

R for the Rest of Us Podcast Episode 8: Matt Herman

In this episode, I chat with Matt Herman about building websites in R. Matt shares lessons from his experience building a self-updating Covid-19 tracking site for Westchester County. Matt is a Data Scientist at the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center, where he focuses on research and policy analysis. Matt has created automated and reproducible workflows to generate outcome measures and performance indicators for several projects within the justice system. Listen to the Audio...

R for the Rest of Us Podcast Episode 7: Silvia Canelón

In this episode, I talk with Silvia Canelón, a postdoctoral research scientist in the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics at the University of Pennsylvania. Silvia why she loves using xaringan to create captivating, audience-friendly presentations directly from R markdown . Making presentations with R Markdown not only saves her time, but also eases the stress associated with updating and distributing presentations. Listen to the Audio Version Watch the Video Version...

R for the Rest of Us Podcast Episode 6: Aaron R. Williams, Livia Mucciolo and Safia Sayed

In this episode, I talk with Aaron R. Williams, Livia Mucciolo and Safia Sayed about their experience using parameterized reporting to make State Fiscal Briefs. They discuss their approach and share advice for those contemplating parameterized reporting. Listen to the Audio Version Watch the Video Version You can also watch the conversation on YouTube . The video version has a detailed explanation of how they applied parameterized reporting to make State Fiscal Briefs at Urban Institute. Read...

R for the Rest of Us Podcast Episode 5: Alison Hill

In this episode, I talk R Markdown with Alison Hill, the Director of Knowledge at Voltron Data. Before taking on this position, she held data science and education positions at IBM and RStudio. Alison has a passion for helping individuals improve the efficiency, accuracy, and reproducibility of their work through the use of R Markdown. During our chat, she shares her personal journey of learning R and the benefits of using R Markdown. Listen to the Audio Version Watch the Video Version You...

How to make your own color palettes in ggplot

One of the great things about creating data viz with ggplot is that you can create color palettes that match your or your clients' branding. We've written about how we do this in our consulting work . But the way we work is fairly complicated and I was asked recently for a simpler solution to making custom ggplot color palettes. I recorded a video to show how to make three different types of palettes Qualitative (i.e. categorical) Sequential (going from a low to a high value) Diverging (going...