Big Magic with R: Creative Learning Beyond Fear

This talk was presented as a keynote for the 2018 Cascadia R Conference (https://cascadiarconf.com/agenda/).

Inspired by the book "Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear" by Elizabeth Gilbert, Alison talks about the five essential ingredients needed to creatively learn R and why these elements are also essential for advanced users to take their R skills to the next level. You will hear practical advice for when, where, and how to start a project in R, and how your learning can add value- both to your own knowledge and to contribute to the larger community of R learners. Along the way, she shares recommended resources and evidence-based strategies for project-based learning. Alison's background working with both new and advanced R users gives her a unique perspective on this topic.

Transcript

1. Alison Hill, Associate Professor of Pediatrics & Assistant Director of OHSU’s Center for Spoken Language Understanding @apreshill @apreshill https://alison.rbind.io/ Slides: http://bit.ly/cascadiarconf-magic BIG MAGIC WITH R: CREATIVE LEARNING BEYOND FEAR
2. 2 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
3. 3 My inspiration today! Image credits: https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/
4. 4 Who am I? • Use R every day • Self-taught
7. pre-tidyverse
8. 8 Who am I? • Use R every day • Self-taught • Taught > 100 MS + PhD students
9. 9 Who are you? • R curious? R beginner? Advanced user? • Use R every day? Every week?
10. Do your job better Get a ^ job Why are we all here? better
11. Courage Enchantment Permission Persistence Trust
12. COURAGE
13. COURAGE IS A PLAN
18. TIDY COURAGE
19. TIDY COURAGE
20. Introduction to the Tidyverse By David Robinson https://www.datacamp.com/courses/introduction-to-the-tidyverse “Learn R, in R” http://swirlstats.com/students.html INTERACTIVE COURAGE
21. BASE R COURAGE https://nostarch.com
23. 23 All-purpose courage • Package reference docs (usage / arguments / examples) • Package vignette • GitHub README • Is there an RStudio Cheatsheet? (https://www.rstudio.com/resources/cheatsheets/) • Are there Stat545 materials by Jenny Bryan? (http://stat545.com) • Is there a roundup by Mara Averick? (https://maraaverick.rbind.io/tags/roundups/) • RWeekly “R Tutorials”: https://rweekly.org/#Tutorials
25. IDEAS WORDS R
26. IDEAS WORDS R
27. 27 NO COURAGE, NO PLAN
28. 28 COURAGEOUS PLANNER
29. ENCHANTMENT
30. ENCHANTMENT IS THE JOY OF WORKING WITH CODE THAT JUST WORKS
33. “It’s not magic; it’s code.” — Ben Welsh, L.A. Times Data Editor
35. DO NOT JUST READ CODE* *Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58.
37. ❌
39. Use #comments and ? ?function_name Description Usage Arguments
41. REPETITION IS POWERFUL
42. IDEAS WORDS R
43. IDEAS WORDS R
44. 44 ADDING ENCHANTMENT
45. 45 JUST ENOUGH ENCHANTMENT
46. PERMISSION
48. “Your [work] not only doesn’t have to be original…it also doesn’t have to be important.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
49. 49 Find projects to copy • RWeekly “R in the Real World”: https://rweekly.org/#RintheRealWorld • Julia Silge (Data Scientist, Stack Overflow) https://juliasilge.com • Dave Robinson (Data Scientist, DataCamp) http://varianceexplained.org • Maëlle Salmon (ROpenSci, LockeData) http://www.masalmon.eu • Lucy and Nick (Vandy biostats students) http://livefreeordichotomize.com
52. CHOOSE WISELY
53. NOT YOUR STYLE
54. NOT YOUR PROBLEM
55. NOT YOUR LEVEL (YET!)
56. IDEAS WORDS R
57. IDEAS WORDS R Your
58. 58 PERMISSION TO TRY FOR THIS
59. 59 PERMISSION TO FEEL LIKE THIS
62. PERSISTENCE
63. “For most of history people just made things, and they didn’t make such a big freaking deal about it.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
64. Hilary Parker https://hilaryparker.com/2013/01/30/hilary-the-most-poisoned-baby-name-in-us-history/
65. Julia Silge https://juliasilge.com/blog/my-baby-boomer-name/
66. Monica Gerber http://www.monicagerber.com/2018/03/little-bit-of-monica/
67. Brooke Watson https://blog.brooke.science/posts/the-us-of-bey/
70. Problem: The data are in Wikipedia tables I need to scrape!
71. Problem: The data are in Wikipedia tables I need to scrape! Solution: Learn rvest
72. New Problem: I need to scrape the same table for all 8 series!
73. New Problem: I need to scrape the same table for all 8 series! Solution: Add purrr
76. 76 My purrrlist • Jennifer Thompson’s R-Ladies Intro: https://github.com/jenniferthompson/RLadiesIntroT oPurrr • Jenny Bryan’s tutorial: https://jennybc.github.io/purrr-tutorial/ • Charlotte Wickham’s tutorial: https://github.com/cwickham/purrr-tutorial • RStudiopurrr cheatsheat: https://github.com/rstudio/cheatsheets/blob/maste r/purrr.pdf • Colin Fay’s purrr blog series: http://colinfay.me/tags/purrr/ • Mara Averick’s roundup of “purrr-ty posts”: https://maraaverick.rbind.io/2017/09/purrr-ty-posts/
77. IDEAS WORDS R
78. IDEAS WORDS R Your
79. You aren’t doing it wrong if no one knows what you are doing
80. TRUST
83. 83 Trust • GitHub: https://github.com – Open an account – You will need this: http://happygitwithr.com • Your own website – My recommendation (obvious, biased): use blogdown – You will need this: https://bookdown.org/yihui/blogdown/ • A friend! – Make sure someone else at your code! – Ideas: • Partner up with someone in your team / lab / company • Find a coding partner at your local R Meet-up or R-Ladies group • Ask the #rstats twitterverse!
85. https://edwinth.github.io/blog-new-things/
86. 86 Up & running with blogdown https://alison.rbind.io/post/up-and-running-with-blogdown/
87. https://amber.rbind.io/blog/2016/12/19/creatingsite/
89. Where are we?
90. X I don’t know X, but I know I can figure it out…
91. X Courage Enchantment Permission Persistence TRUST!
92. X Courage Enchantment Permission Persistence TRUST!
93. 93 Learning should not feel like this
94. 94 Learning should feel like this
95. Trey Speegle- https://20x200.com/products/trey-speegle-thank-you