The Statistical Computing Series

The Statistical Computing Series is a monthly event for learning various aspects of modern statistical computing from practitioners in the Department of Biostatistics. We focus on topics related to the R language, Python, and related tools, but we include the broadest possible range of content related to effective statistical computation. The format varies, depending on the speaker and the topic, from lectures to demonstrations to hands-on workshops.

If you have a particular topic you would like to see covered, please send a request.

There have been several requests for coverage of various topics. Here is a short list, if you are interested in contributing but are seeking inspiration:

  • writing R functions with formula arguments
  • writing R functions with methods
  • using makefiles
  • other graphics packages (base graphics)
  • lme4/nlme
  • reshape (package not function)/plyr
  • R data structures
  • bootstrapping / random number generating
  • imputation (using various packages and functions)
  • bibtex
  • software for slide presentations

Time & Location

Fourth Friday of each month at 1:30 pm in the Biostatistics Conference Room (11105, 2525 West End Avenue).

Email Notification

We send out email notifications the week of a particular presentation. If you would like to be added to the list, please let us know.

Winter/Spring 2021 Schedule

Advanced R Reporting
19 March, 2021 Frank Harrell

This talk illustrates the following:
  • parallel processing to speed up simulations.
  • using a hash to only run simulations when an input parameter or the source code changes
  • using the data.table package for aggregating and reshaping data tables
  • auto-sensing when html format is being produced
  • automatically switching to interactive plotly graphics when creating the html version of the report
  • dynamic creation of a sequence of R markdown knitr code chunks each with its own figure caption, using Hmisc::markupSpecs$html$mdchunk
  • use of the beautiful rmdreadthedown report template when producing html
  • use of special LaTeX options when producing pdf

The report to be discussed and its complete RMarkdown file and service functions may be found at https://hbiostat.org/R/Hmisc/markov

RStudio addins and open discussion
26 February, 2021 Josh DeClercq

RStudio addins are extensions which can both simplify and enhance the user’s ability to write R code. They are executable from within RStudio and are accessible to just like any other R package. They can provide a wide range of useful functions, including interactive plotting using ggplot, help with regular expressions, or styling cluttered code. I will provide a brief overview of a few of these features.

In addition, I encourage people to participate in an open discussion regarding the statistical computing series. I am curious to get input on topics that people may be interested in, ideas for presentations or presenters, or any general ideas that can help improve the series. Any feedback or insight is welcome.

R code

Repello: Reports from Trello in R
22 January, 2021 Andrew Guide

Trello is an application for project management that has been utilized in a wide variety of settings. R is a statistical computing software widely used to process data and generate reports. In this presentation, I will introduce the Repello package for R which reads in data via the Trello API in order to generate a customizable progress report of all projects in a Trello board. I will also show how one can setup a cron job in Linux so that the progress report is automatically generated on a repeating schedule.

In addition, I will also show how I use this tool within the nephrology-epidemiology-biostatistics collaboration, which is a large research group with multiple, simultaneous ongoing research projects. The goal in creating this tool was to keep all the investigators informed about the progress of individual projects in the collaboration. I will speak about why I think keeping the entire team in the loop about all the projects is helpful.

Presentation slides

Winter/Spring 2020 Schedule

The "Harrellverse"
24 January, 2020 Frank Harrell

Frank will describe the systems he has in place for managing communications, blog, operating system and R package updates, news feeds, file sharing, synchronizing computers, and other aspects of computer life.

Fall 2019 Schedule

Creating and Distributing R Packages: A Case Study
25 October, 2019 Jeff Jetton

The thousands of available add-on packages are one of the reasons R has been so widely-adopted. This discussion will cover how (and why) R users might develop their own packages and, as an example, trace the journey of the “greenclust” package from its initial creation through to its recent submission to CRAN.

Intro to Bayesian Regression Modeling in R using rstanarm
27 September, 2019 Nathan James

Presentation slides

API Construction for Scalable Delivery of Model Predictions using R and the Plumber package
23 August, 2019 Shawn Garbett

Spring 2019 Schedule

Tangram: Tools for Reproducible Tables
29 March, 2019 Shawn Garbett

Introduction to Docker
26 April, 2019 Nick Strayer


Fall 2018 Schedule

Getting Started with Bayesian Modeling in PyMC3

24 August, 2018 Chris Fonnesbeck


Improving organization and collaboration with Trello and integration with R

28 September, 2018 Molly Olson


Data Cleaning with dataMaid

26 October, 2018 Molly Olson and Omair Khan

Data screening is an important first step of any statistical analysis. dataMaid autogenerates a customizable data report with a thorough summary of the checks and the results that a human can use to identify possible errors. It provides an extendable suite of test for common potential errors in a dataset. Molly will provide an introductory tutorial for using dataMaid in your data analysis workflow. Omair will present an example of dataMaid's extendability.


Click to view previous presentations

Topic attachments
I Attachment Action Size Date Who Comment
Addins.RmdRmd Addins.Rmd manage 5.5 K 26 Feb 2021 - 14:04 JoshDeClercq  
Repello_–_R_Reports_from_Trello.pptxpptx Repello_–_R_Reports_from_Trello.pptx manage 1428.6 K 25 Jan 2021 - 09:27 JoshDeClercq Repello slides
bayes_reg_rstanarm.htmlhtml bayes_reg_rstanarm.html manage 2666.0 K 02 Oct 2019 - 09:08 JoshDeClercq Intro to Bayesian analysis in R
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Topic revision: r161 - 15 Mar 2021, JoshDeClercq
 

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