Solving the lonely data scientist problem

There is a well documented problem across statisticians, data scientists, and data analysts. Whether they are an isolated data scientist or are embedded on a team of statisticians, they tend to do their work alone. Even if your team is using git and GitHub, it doesn’t mean that people are reading each other’s code.

The longer that I worked as a statistician on research teams, the more I became convinced that code review should be a key component of this job and would solve the problem of working in isolation. How else would I grow and if I wasn’t looking at others’ work and having someone review mine? If you are a writer or editor, one of the key ways you get better at your craft is by reading widely and sharing drafts. I started advocating for a code review system in my group. However, each time I tried to implement this practice it felt like it never really stuck.

Roundup of growth chart packages

At rOpenSci’s annual unconf, I suggested a project to work on functions that convert physical growth measurements into z-scores and percentiles. For example, researchers in the United States studying childhood obesity often calculate the BMI z-score or percentage of the 95th percentile of BMI from nationally representative survey data.

During the process of brainstorming and working on this project, the team¹ I was working with found out some related R packages that do this. To help us move forward with the project and identify next steps, I round up these packages below.² If I’m missing something, please comment so I can add it to this post!

Reflections on rstudio::conf 2018

It’s been a couple of months since rstudio::conf 2018 and I’m still mulling over what I learned in 2 days in San Diego. I grew up in the sunshine of San Diego, so it was good to be back and also feel inspired by the amazing energy of the R community. Here’s a reflection on what the conference was like, what ideas I’ve been running with, and how what I learned will change what I do over the course of the next year.

A little bit of Monica in my life

One analysis in the R community that caught my attention is Hilary Parker’s analysis of the most poisoned baby name in US history. I was surprised that my own name didn’t show up in the analysis. If Hilary had a huge loss in 1993, what happened to Monica in 1999?

For a period when I was a kid the name ‘Monica’ is what made the adults turn down the NPR broadcast. Its entrance into popular culture due to the Clinton Impeachment, a shoutout in Mambo No. 5, and also being name of the the least likable roommate on Friends (#bossy)¹, wasn’t exactly the kind of material that was going to make me cool.

Hello, world!