Re: [D-RUG]: Digest for davis-rug@googlegroups.com - 1 update in 1 topic

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Jimmy Calanchini

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Jul 29, 2015, 3:06:12 PM7/29/15
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Hello Davis R Users,

Long time subscriber, first time poster.  I’m also a long time SPSS user who is easing into using R, but it’s going a lot slower than I’d prefer, so I’m interested in taking an R course here on campus this upcoming year.  I see that STA141 is being offered in the fall.  Does anybody know if the instructor allows grad students to audit?  I’m in my dissertation year and have a family, so I’d prefer to not formally enroll if I don’t have to -- though I certainly intend to come to class and do the work. I emailed Duncan Temple Lang a few weeks ago to ask him about auditing but never heard back. He probably gets dozens of those kinds of emails, plus its summer.


If STA141 doesn’t work out for me for whatever reason, can anybody recommend another R course that is being offered this year?  Most of the ones listed on Noam Ross’ website seem to focus on specific applications and only teach R incidentally in service of those applications, whereas I’m looking for a more general R course.


Thanks in advance for the advice!
Jimmy


Jimmy Calanchini, ABD
UC Davis Department of Psychology
Social Cognition Lab: psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/sherman/site
www.jimmycalanchini.com

On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 6:11 PM, <davi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Noam Ross <noam...@gmail.com>: Jul 24 03:28PM

Hi all,
 
Hot on the heels of the last Software Carpentry, here's another!
 
Software Carpentry is pleased to announce that the latest in our series of
workshops for women in science and engineering will be held at UC Davis on
August 17-18, 2015. This workshop is aimed at those in science,
engineering, medicine, or related fields who identify as women, female, or
on the non-binary spectrum. Our instructors are experienced with creating
safe spaces for those on the trans* spectrum, and one openly identifies as
a trans woman; ensuring that we maintain an inclusive environment is a top
priority for this workshop. For more information, or to register, please
see the workshop website:
http://camillescott.github.io/2015-08-16-ucdavis-wise/
 
Topics for this SWC will be :
 
- Automating tasks with the Unix shell
- Building programs with Python
- Version control with Git
- Managing data with SQL
 
Just like in speech, it's super helpful to know a second language! Even if
you are mostly an R user it's useful to pick up some Python, and everything
else in this workshop complements R, as well.
 
As always, sign up before all the spots are taken!
http://camillescott.github.io/2015-08-16-ucdavis-wise/
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Michael Hannon

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Jul 29, 2015, 3:09:18 PM7/29/15
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Historically, Duncan has been very welcoming to auditors.  Note that the course is fast-paced and typically not exclusively about R.

-- Mike

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Brandon Hurr

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Jul 29, 2015, 3:15:05 PM7/29/15
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Do you need an official course? There are loads online through coursera or other places. 

When I was first starting out I found that buying a book, reading it and following along with the examples made the most improvements in my abilities. That and lots and lots of googling for "how do I ....?". Mike Crawley's R Book is a beast, but it has loads of examples. If you're thinking of doing plotting and using ggplot2, do not buy/use the ggplot2 book that Hadley wrote, it is terribly out of date. You can build the new one he's working on here: https://github.com/hadley/ggplot2-book or Winston Chang's book is good too. 

These cheatsheets from Rstudio are really handy too:

On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 12:06 PM, Jimmy Calanchini <jcala...@ucdavis.edu> wrote:

Michael Levy

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Jul 29, 2015, 3:30:05 PM7/29/15
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STA141 is a great class, but it is among the highest workload classes I've taken. Like Mike said, it's not all R, but it's about 2/3 R, with the rest (last year at least) being shell, sql, and regex... very useful things to know a bit about. The non-R stuff is grouped at the end of the quarter, so if you audited you could skip that. Duncan previously has allowed auditors, but demand for this and similar classes is exploding and physical space is sometimes a problem, so that may not be the case in the future. 

I will be offering a one-week R bootcamp at the end of the summer; more to come on that soon, and there are other similar offerings both on and off campus.



Michael Levy

PhD Candidate
Department of Environmental Science and Policy
University of California, Davis

C. Titus Brown

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Jul 29, 2015, 5:10:56 PM7/29/15
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Hi Jimmy,

a few thoughts --

* I'll probably host another Data Carpentry or Software Carpentry sometime
between now and January; keep an eye on this list, and/or join the
dib-training list (dib-training.readthedocs.org/en/pub/). Software Carpentry
sometime teaches R, while Data Carpentry relies much more on R but is
more discipline specific.

* Berkeley runs regular workshops through BIDS, not sure what they're offering
but it's not too far away if you can find something;

* the Data Science Initiative (run by Duncan) will probably be offering their
own workshops (or co-hosting my things, or some mix :) in the fall;

* there are a *lot* of videos etc online; I would start here:

http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2013/04/coursera-data-analysis-course-videos.html

cheers,
--titus

On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 03:29:45PM -0400, Michael Levy wrote:
> STA141 is a great class, but it is among the highest workload classes I've
> taken. Like Mike said, it's not all R, but it's about 2/3 R, with the rest
> (last year at least) being shell, sql, and regex... very useful things to
> know a bit about. The non-R stuff is grouped at the end of the quarter, so
> if you audited you could skip that. Duncan previously has allowed auditors,
> but demand for this and similar classes is exploding and physical space is
> sometimes a problem, so that may not be the case in the future.
>
> I will be offering a one-week R bootcamp at the end of the summer; more to
> come on that soon, and there are other similar offerings both on and off
> campus.
>
>
>
> Michael Levy
> PhD Candidate
> Department of Environmental Science and Policy
> University of California, Davis
> mal...@ucdavis.edu
> *www.michaellevy.name <http://www.michaellevy.name/>*
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 3:14 PM, Brandon Hurr <brando...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Do you need an official course? There are loads online through coursera or
> > other places.
> >
> > When I was first starting out I found that buying a book, reading it and
> > following along with the examples made the most improvements in my
> > abilities. That and lots and lots of googling for "how do I ....?". Mike
> > Crawley's R Book is a beast, but it has loads of examples. If you're
> > thinking of doing plotting and using ggplot2, do not buy/use the ggplot2
> > book that Hadley wrote, it is terribly out of date. You can build the new
> > one he's working on here: https://github.com/hadley/ggplot2-book or
> > Winston Chang's book is good too.
> >
> > These cheatsheets from Rstudio are really handy too:
> > https://www.rstudio.com/resources/cheatsheets/
> >
> > HTH,
> > Brandon
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 12:06 PM, Jimmy Calanchini <
> > jcala...@ucdavis.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> Hello Davis R Users,
> >>
> >> Long time subscriber, first time poster. I???m also a long time SPSS user
> >> who is easing into using R, but it???s going a lot slower than I???d prefer, so
> >> I???m interested in taking an R course here on campus this upcoming year. I
> >> see that STA141 is being offered in the fall. Does anybody know if the
> >> instructor allows grad students to audit? I???m in my dissertation year and
> >> have a family, so I???d prefer to not formally enroll if I don???t have to --
> >> though I certainly intend to come to class and do the work. I emailed
> >> Duncan Temple Lang a few weeks ago to ask him about auditing but never
> >> heard back. He probably gets dozens of those kinds of emails, plus its
> >> summer.
> >>
> >>
> >> If STA141 doesn???t work out for me for whatever reason, can anybody
> >> recommend another R course that is being offered this year? Most of the
> >> ones listed on Noam Ross??? website seem to focus on specific applications
> >> and only teach R incidentally in service of those applications, whereas I???m
> >> looking for a more general R course.
> >>
> >>
> >> Thanks in advance for the advice!
> >> Jimmy
> >>
> >> Jimmy Calanchini, ABD
> >> UC Davis Department of Psychology
> >> Social Cognition Lab: psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/sherman/site
> >> www.jimmycalanchini.com
> >>
> >> On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 6:11 PM, <davi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> davi...@googlegroups.com
> >>> <https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_source=digest&utm_medium=email#!forum/davis-rug/topics> Google
> >>> Groups
> >>> <https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_source=digest&utm_medium=email/#!overview>
> >>> <https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_source=digest&utm_medium=email/#!overview>
> >>> Topic digest
> >>> View all topics
> >>> <https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_source=digest&utm_medium=email#!forum/davis-rug/topics>
> >>>
> >>> - Women in Science and Engineering Software Carpentry, Aug 17-18
> >>> <#14edb4a803a759ff_14edb3d53ba5a809_14edb35354912a81_14ec2c3d8de30ce1_group_thread_0>
> >>> - 1 Update
> >>>
> >>> Women in Science and Engineering Software Carpentry, Aug 17-18
> >>> <http://groups.google.com/group/davis-rug/t/353520aa952085d7?utm_source=digest&utm_medium=email>
> >>> <#14edb4a803a759ff_14edb3d53ba5a809_14edb35354912a81_14ec2c3d8de30ce1_digest_top>
> >>> You received this digest because you're subscribed to updates for
> >>> this group. You can change your settings on the group membership page
> >>> <https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_source=digest&utm_medium=email#!forum/davis-rug/join>
> >>> .
C. Titus Brown, ctb...@ucdavis.edu

Michael Hannon

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Jul 29, 2015, 6:45:54 PM7/29/15
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This thread has gotten long enough that I may have just missed something important, but let me offer the following, possibly-gratuitous suggestion.

I suggest you start learning R from any of the various useful resources already mentioned in this thread and then regard this list as a "private tutor".  E.g., if you get to the '*apply' family of functions in your reading and don't understand the difference between sapply and lapply, just ask this list for clarification.  (Example picked more or less at random and not intended to be representative of problems faced by a given person.)

-- Mike


On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 12:06 PM, Jimmy Calanchini <jcala...@ucdavis.edu> wrote:

--
Check out our R resources at http://www.noamross.net/davis-r-users-group.html
---
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Noam Ross

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Jul 29, 2015, 10:28:03 PM7/29/15
to davi...@googlegroups.com
Another suggestion in the vein of Mike's: Whatever in-person or online course you work through, come to the D-RUG work sessions to do your homework/practice.  There will be plenty of people around to answer questions as they come up!

I don't have a good feel for any of the online courses, and the books are too many to count.  It's often best if you find one that has a focus on using R for statistics in your field or with your methods, just because there are . That said, I have heard many good reviews of http://swirlstats.com/, which is a set of interactive lessons that run in the R console.

--Noam

Duncan Temple Lang

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Jul 29, 2015, 11:35:59 PM7/29/15
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Sorry for chiming in so late - "torturing" other students in a Data Studies course :-)

Yep, I admit it - 141 is intense. Two comments -

while based on R, the intent is computational reasoning for data analys, so those first 6 weeks
are not just R but a lot of other aspects that we unfortunately haven't taught in other courses.

in the "near" future, we will change STA141 & STA242 into 3 courses at both the UG and Grad. level
that will a) make the first course less intense, b) teach more topics for data sciences
And even better, there will be a project/capstone course in actual data analysis!!!!


Also, go to do the Data Sciences site (dsi.ucdavis.edu) and suggest different topics and formats
for materials you want to learn about.

We are doing some work in engineering soon, and one of the key premises is ongoing follow-up,
projects, user groups, etc. that allow you to internalize some of the material from courses,
workshops, etc.

Thanks
Duncan.




On 7/29/15 12:29 PM, Michael Levy wrote:
> STA141 is a great class, but it is among the highest workload classes
> I've taken. Like Mike said, it's not all R, but it's about 2/3 R,
> with the rest (last year at least) being shell, sql, and regex...
> very useful things to know a bit about. The non-R stuff is grouped at
> the end of the quarter, so if you audited you could skip that. Duncan
> previously has allowed auditors, but demand for this and similar
> classes is exploding and physical space is sometimes a problem, so
> that may not be the case in the future.
>
> I will be offering a one-week R bootcamp at the end of the summer;
> more to come on that soon, and there are other similar offerings both
> on and off campus.
>
>
>
> Michael Levy
>
> PhD Candidate Department of Environmental Science and Policy
> University of California, Davis mal...@ucdavis.edu
> <mailto:mal...@ucdavis.edu> _www.michaellevy.name
> <http://www.michaellevy.name/>_
> <http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/sherman/site>
> www.jimmycalanchini.com <http://www.jimmycalanchini.com>
>
> On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 6:11 PM, <davi...@googlegroups.com
> Topic digest View all topics
> <https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_source=digest&utm_medium=email#!forum/davis-rug/topics>
>
> * Women in Science and Engineering Software Carpentry, Aug 17-18
> <#14edb4a803a759ff_14edb3d53ba5a809_14edb35354912a81_14ec2c3d8de30ce1_group_thread_0>
> - 1 Update
>
> Women in Science and Engineering Software Carpentry, Aug 17-18
> <http://groups.google.com/group/davis-rug/t/353520aa952085d7?utm_source=digest&utm_medium=email>
>
>
Noam Ross <noam...@gmail.com <mailto:noam...@gmail.com>>: Jul 24 03:28PM
>
> Hi all,
>
> Hot on the heels of the last Software Carpentry, here's another!
>
> Software Carpentry is pleased to announce that the latest in our
> series of workshops for women in science and engineering will be held
> at UC Davis on August 17-18, 2015. This workshop is aimed at those in
> science, engineering, medicine, or related fields who identify as
> women, female, or on the non-binary spectrum. Our instructors are
> experienced with creating safe spaces for those on the trans*
> spectrum, and one openly identifies as a trans woman; ensuring that
> we maintain an inclusive environment is a top priority for this
> workshop. For more information, or to register, please see the
> workshop website:
> http://camillescott.github.io/2015-08-16-ucdavis-wise/
>
> Topics for this SWC will be :
>
> - Automating tasks with the Unix shell - Building programs with
> Python - Version control with Git - Managing data with SQL
>
> Just like in speech, it's super helpful to know a second language!
> Even if you are mostly an R user it's useful to pick up some Python,
> and everything else in this workshop complements R, as well.
>
> As always, sign up before all the spots are taken!
> http://camillescott.github.io/2015-08-16-ucdavis-wise/
>
> Back to top
> <#14edb4a803a759ff_14edb3d53ba5a809_14edb35354912a81_14ec2c3d8de30ce1_digest_top>
>
>
You received this digest because you're subscribed to updates for this group. You can change your settings on the group membership page <https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_source=digest&utm_medium=email#!forum/davis-rug/join>.
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>
>
> -- Check out our R resources at
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>
>
> -- Check out our R resources at
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>
>
> -- Check out our R resources at
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Director, Data Sciences Initiative, UC Davis
Professor, Dept. of Statistics, UC Davis

http://datascience.ucdavis.edu
http://www.stat.ucdavis.edu/~duncan
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