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You Can Lead a Horse to Water…Changing the Data Science Culture for Veterinary Scientists

Presented by Jill MacKay

A retrospective look at supporting data science skills in a research-focussed veterinary school

This is a talk about environment management, but not in the way you’re thinking. In many industries, domain-specific experts need enough understanding of data science to support their work and communicate with data scientists, but often have insufficient training in these skills, and limited time with which to obtain data science skills and practice them. This is particularly challenging for those who are interdisciplinary and have limited control over their workload, such as medics and field scientists. In this talk, an educational scientist describes the previous 10 years of supporting veterinary scientists to adopt open science practices surrounding data science. What worked, what failed miserably, and reflections on why it can be so hard to get a horse to drink.

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Why You Should Stop Networking and Start Making Friends - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Libby Heeren

When we think about making connections, we think about networking. I’d like you to forget about networking and start thinking about making friends. I’ll share my perspective as a community builder and host of the Data Humans podcast on how I cultivated a community of practice for myself and how I became a force multiplier who increases engagement.

You’ll learn how I made genuine human connections, the practical steps to making data friends, the power of vulnerability, and why we all benefit when we show up as our whole selves.

Why You Should Add Logging To Your Code (and make it more helpful) - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Daren Eiri

Learn how the log4r package can help you better understand the errors your code may produce, and how to also get promptly alerted for severe errors by leveraging cloud monitoring solutions like Azure Monitor or AWS CloudWatch

When an error happens in your API, Shiny App, or quarto document, it is not always clear what line of code you need to look at, and the error messages aren’t always helpful. By walking through a simple API example, I show how you can use logging packages like log4r to provide error messages that make sense to you. I also show how you can use cloud-based data collection platforms like Azure Monitor or AWS CloudWatch to set up alerts, so you can get notified by email or text message for those severe errors that you need to be immediately aware of.

Gain more visibility into the health of your code by incorporating logging and pushing your logs to the cloud.

What’s New in the Torch Ecosystem - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Daniel Falbel

torch is an R port of PyTorch, a scientific computing library that enables fast and easy creation and training of deep learning models.

In this talk, you will learn about the latest features and developments in torch, such as luz, a higher-level interface that simplifies your model training code, and vetiver, a new integration that allows you to deploy your torch models with just a few lines of code. You will also see how torch works well with other R packages and tools to enhance your data science workflow. Whether you are new to torch or already an experienced user, this talk will show you how torch can help you tackle your data science challenges and inspire you to build your own models.

What’s New in Quarto?* - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Charlotte Wickham

It’s been over a year since Quarto 1.0, an open-source scientific and technical publishing system, was announced at rstudio::conf(2022). In this talk, I’ll highlight some of the improvements to Quarto since then. You’ll learn about new formats, options, tools, and ways to supercharge your content. And, if you haven’t used Quarto yet, come to see some reasons to try it out.

What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Data Scientist - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Kaitlin Bustos

In this talk, I’m sharing my personal journey as a data scientist and the key lessons learned along the way. I’ll emphasize the importance of finding a positive community of like minded-allies, persevering through setbacks as success is not linear, and exploring by embracing the broad nature of the data science field. By sharing my experiences and acknowledging the challenges I’ve faced attendees will gain a fresh perspective on what it takes to succeed in a data science career and inspire them to pursue their passions in the field.

Overall, this talk aims to provide a glimpse into the reality of a data science career. Attendees will take away a sense of motivation and empowerment to find their own unique path to success.

What an Early 2000s Reality Show Taught Me about File Management - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Reiko Okamoto

Clutter, whether it’s physical or digital, destroys our ability to focus; home organization ideas can be extended to create an workspace where analysts feel inspired to work with data.

Ideas from home organization shows are surprisingly applicable to file management. Using a room divider to establish dedicated zones for different activities in a studio apartment is analogous to creating self-contained projects in RStudio. Likewise, swapping mismatched hangers with matching ones to tidy a closet resembles the adoption of a file naming convention to make a directory easier to navigate.

In this talk, I will share good practices in file management through the lens of home organization. We all know that clutter, whether it is in our physical space or on our machine, destroys our ability to focus. These practices will help R users of all levels create a serene, relaxing environment where they feel inspired to work with data.

We Converted our Documentation to Quarto - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Melissa Van Bussel

Elevate your Quarto projects to new heights with these practical tips and tricks!

“Wiki”, “User Guide”, “Handbook” – whatever you call yours, we converted ours to Quarto!

A year ago, my team’s documentation, which had been created using Microsoft Word, was large and lacked version control. Scrolling through the document was slow, and, due to confidentiality reasons, only one person could edit it at a time, which was a significant challenge for our team of multiple developers. After realizing we needed a more flexible solution, we successfully converted our documentation to Quarto.

In this talk, I’ll discuss our journey converting to Quarto, the challenges we faced along the way, and tips and tricks for anyone else who might be looking to adopt Quarto too.

Visualizing Data Analysis Pipelines with Pandas Tutor and Tidy Data Tutor - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Sean Kross

The data frame is a fundamental data structure for data scientists using Python and R. Pandas and the tidyverse are designed to center building pipelines for the transformation of data frames. However, within these pipelines it is not always clear how each operation is changing the underlying data frame. To explain each step in a pipeline data science instructors resort to hand-drawing diagrams to illustrate the semantics of operations such as filtering, sorting, and grouping.

In this talk, I will introduce Pandas Tutor and Tidy Data Tutor, step-by-step visual representation engines of data frame transformations. Both tools illustrate the row, column, and cell-wise relationships between an operation’s input and output data frames.

Validating and Testing R Dataframes with Pandera via reticulate - R-Python Interoperability

Presented by Niels Bantilan

Original Full Title: Validating and Testing R Dataframes with Pandera via reticulate: A Case Study in R-Python Interoperability

Data science and machine learning practitioners work with data every day to analyze and model them for insights and predictions. A major component of any project is data quality, which is a process of cleaning, and protecting against flaws in data that may invalidate the analysis or model. Pandera is an open source data testing toolkit for dataframes in the Python ecosystem: but can it validate R dataframes?

This talk is composed of three parts: first I’ll describe what data testing is and motivate why you need it. Then, I’ll introduce the iterative process of creating and refining dataframe schemas in Pandera. Finally, I’ll demonstrate how to use it in R with the reticulate package using a simple modeling exercise as an example.

Using R, Python, and Cloud Infrastructure to Battle Aquatic Invasive Species - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Uli Muellner and Nicholas Snellgrove

Invasive species are a huge threat to lake ecosystems in Minnesota. With over 10,000 water bodies across the state, having up-to-date data and decision support is critical. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have created four complex R and Python models to support lake managers, all pulled together and presented with the most recent infestation data available.

Come along with us to see how we connected these models in the AIS Explorer, a decision support application built in Shiny to help prioritize risks and placing watercraft inspectors, using tools like OCPU and cloud toolings like Lambda, EventBridge and AWS S3.

Using R with Databricks Connect - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Edgar Ruiz

Spark Connect, and Databricks Connect, enable the ability to interact with Spark stand-alone clusters remotely. This improves our ability to perform Data Science at-scale. We will share the work in sparklyr, and other products, that will make it easier for R users to take advantage this new framework.

Using R to develop production modeling workflows at Mayo Clinic - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Brendan Broderick

Developing workflows that help train models and also help deploy them can be a difficult task. In this talk I will share some tools and workflow tips that I use to build production model pipelines using R. I will use a project of predicting patients who need specialized respiratory care after leaving the ICU as an example. I will show how to use the targets package to create a reproducible and easy to manage modeling and prediction pipeline, how to use the renv package to ensure a consistent environment for development and deployment, and how to use plumber, vetiver, and shiny applications to make the model accessible to care providers.

Using Data to Protect Traditional Lifeways - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Angie Reed

The spirit of Penobscot Nation’s work to protect the health of their relative, the Penobscot River, is embodied in the Penobscot water song which says ““Water, we love you, thank you so much water, we respect you.”” Because the Penobscot River is not a natural resource - she is a relative, family - this song describes the foundation of our efforts to protect her health and well-being. The identity of Penobscot people cannot be disconnected from the river, and protecting this traditional lifeway is at the heart of our work.

For over a decade we have used R to manage, transform, analyze, and visualize data, and the free, open-source Posit products help us leave a legacy of good data management and the ability to share results with Penobscot Nation citizens. You will learn more about how our use of R has helped us achieve more stringent protections for the Penobscot River and how we engage young people in every step of this work. We are also part of a larger network of tribal environmental professionals, working together to learn R and share data and insights. We will give you information about how you can volunteer to help expand the network of folks providing technical assistance on any R and RStudio related topics.

USGS R Package Development: 10-year Reflections - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Laura DeCicco

Ten years ago, the first set of git commits was submitted to a new R software package repository “dataRetrieval” with the goal to provide an easy way for R users to retrieve U.S Geological Survey (USGS) water data. At that time, the perception within the USGS was the use of R was exclusive to an elite group of “very serious scientists.” Fast forward, we now find many newer USGS hires having a solid grasp of the language from the start along with the use of R in a wide variety of applications.

In this talk, I’ll discuss my experiences maintaining the dataRetrieval package, how it’s shaped my career, impacted USGS R usage, and why data providers should consider sponsoring their own R packages wrapping their data API services.

Unlock the Power of DataViz Animation and Interactivity in Quarto - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Deepsha Menghani

Plot animated and interactive visualizations with Plotly and Crosstalk in Quarto using R. In thi sintro to Plotly & Crosstalk in R: Using code examples, learn to integrate dashboard elements into Quarto with animated plots, interactive widgets (checkboxes), and linked plots via brushing.

This talk showcases how to use packages, such as Plotly and Crosstalk, to create interactive data visualizations and add dashboard-like elements to Quarto. Using a fun dataset available through the “Richmondway” package, we examine the number of times Roy Kent uses salty language throughout all seasons of ““Ted Lasso.”” We illustrate this using animated plots, interactive selection widgets such as checkboxes, and by linking two plots with brushing capabilities.

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Towards the Next Generation of Shiny UI

Presented by Carson Sievert

Create awesome looking and feature rich Shiny dashboards using the bslib R package.

Shiny recently celebrated its 10th birthday, and since its birth, has grown tremendously in many areas; however, a hello world Shiny app still looks roughly like it did 10 years ago. The bslib R package helps solve this problem making very easy to apply modern and customizable styling your Shiny apps, R Markdown / Quarto documents, and more. In addition, bslib also provides dashboard-focused UI components like expandable cards, value boxes, sidebar layouts, and more to help you create delightful Shiny dashboards.

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tidymodels: Adventures in Rewriting a Modeling Pipeline - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Ryan Timpe

An overview of the benefits unlocked on our data science team by adopting tidymodels.

Data science sure has changed over the past few years! Everyone’s talking about production. RStudio is now Posit. Models are now tidy.

This talk is about embracing that change and updating existing models using the tidymodels framework. I recently completed this change, letting go of our in-production code and revisioning it with tidymodels. My team ended up with a faster, more scalable pipeline that enabled us to better automate our workflow and increase our scale while improving our stakeholders’ experiences.

I’ll share tips and tricks for adopting the tidymodels framework in existing products, best practices for learning and upskilling teams, and advice for using tidymodel packages to build more accessible data science tools.

The Road to Easier Shiny App Deployments - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Liam Kalita

We’re often helping developers to assess, fix and improve their Shiny apps, and often the first thing we do is see if we can deploy the app. If you can’t deploy your Shiny app, it’s a waste of time. If you can deploy it successfully, then at the very least it runs, so we’ve got something to work with.

There are a bunch of reasons why apps fail to deploy. They can be easy to fix, like Hardcoded secrets, fonts, or missing libraries. Or they can be intractable and super frustrating to deal with, like manifest mismatches, resource starvation, and missing libraries.

At the end of this talk, I want you to know how to identify, investigate and proactively prevent Shiny app deployment failures from happening.

The Power of Prototyping in R Shiny: Saving Millions by Building the Right Tool - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Maria Grycuk

The development of software can be costly and time-consuming. If the end users are not involved in the process from the start the tool we built may not meet their needs. In this presentation, I will discuss how prototyping in Shiny can help you build the right tool and save you from spending millions of dollars on a tool no one will use. I will explore the advantages of using Shiny for prototyping, particularly its ability to rapidly build interactive applications. I will also discuss how to design effective prototypes, including techniques for gathering user feedback and using that feedback to refine your tool. I will emphasize the importance of presenting real-life data, particularly when building data-driven tools.

The People of Posit: Bringing Personality to R Packages - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by JP Flores and Sarah Parker

The R programming language offers the versatility to perform statistical analyses, create publication-ready plots, and render high-quality reports and presentations. Despite having this environment of indispensable tools, it can be daunting for a beginner-level programmer to get started. Luckily, the Posit community is one of a kind and values inclusivity, collaboration, and empathy. By putting a face to the R packages we use on a daily basis, we hope to make every programmer feel included and capable. We want to inspire attendees to create their own projects or packages, connect with others inside and outside of their field of expertise, and challenge themselves to learn something new, knowing the community is right there to support them.

The Need for Speed - AccelerateR-ing R Adoption in GSK - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Ben Arancibia

How does a risk-averse Pharma Biostatistics organization with 900+ people switch from using proprietary software to using R and other open-source tools for delivering clinical trial submissions? First slowly, then all at once. GSK started the transition of using R for its clinical trial data analysis in 2020 and now uses R for our regulatory-reviewed outputs. The AccelerateR Team, an agile pod of R experts and data scientists, rotates through GSK Biostatistics study teams sitting side by side to answer questions and mentor during this transition.

We will share our experience from AccelerateR and how other organizations can use our learnings to scale R from pilots to full enterprise adoption and contribute to open source industry R packages.

The ‘I’ in Team: Peer-to-Peer Best Practices for Growing Data Science Teams - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Liz Roten

R users don’t always come in sets. Often, you may be the only user on in the cubicle-block. But, one miraculous day, your manager finally fills the void and you welcome more folks on your team. Suddenly, the little R system you created to suit your needs, like a custom package, code styling, and file organization, isn’t just for you.

Want to suddenly overhaul that one package you wrote two years ago? It probably won’t work when your colleagues try to update it.

Your new teammates are data.table fans, but you prefer the tidyverse. Do you need to refactor? Are style choices, like indentation important when collaborating, or are you just being persnickety?

In this talk, you will learn how to bring new teammates on board and blend your respective styles without pulling your hair out.

Thanks, I Made It with Quartodoc - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Isabel Zimmerman

When Python package developers create documentation, they typically must choose between mostly auto-generated docs or writing all the docs by hand. This is problematic since effective documentation has a mix of function references, high-level context, examples, and other content.

Quartodoc is a new documentation system that automatically generates Python function references within Quarto websites. This talk will discuss pkgdown’s success in the R ecosystem and how those wins can be replicated in Python with quartodoc examples. Listeners will walk away knowing more about what makes documentation delightful (or painful), when to use quartodoc, and how to use this tool to make docs for a Python package.

Teaching Data Science in Adverse Circumstances: Posit Cloud and Quarto to the Rescue - posit::conf

Presented by Aleksander Dietrichson

The focus of this presentation is on the challenges faced by teachers of data science whose students are not quantitatively inclined and may face some adversity in terms of technology resources available to them and potential language barriers. I identify three main areas of challenges and show how at Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Argentina) we addressed each of the areas through a combination of original curriculum redesign, production of course materials appropriate for the students in question; and the use of OS, and some Posit products, i.e.:posit.cloud and Quarto. I show how these technologies can be used as a pedagogical tool to overcome the challenges mentioned, even on a shoestring budget.

Take it in Bits: Using R to Make Eviction Data Accessible to the Legal Aid Community - posit::conf

Presented by Logan Pratico

One in five low-income renter households in the US experienced falling behind on rent or being threatened with eviction in 2021. Yet most are unrepresented when facing eviction in court. The complex and fast-paced legal system obscures access to timely information, leaving tenants without assistance.

In this talk, I discuss the Civil Court Data Initiative’s use of R alongside AWS Cloud and SQL to analyze disaggregate eviction records. I focus on the integration of RMarkdown with Amazon Athena and EC2 to create weekly eviction reports across 20 states for legal aid groups working to assist tenants. The upshot: accessible eviction data to help legal aid providers better address local legal needs.

Sustainable Growth of Global Communities: R-Ladies’ Next Ten Years - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Riva Quiroga

In this talk we share how good programming practices inspire the way we manage the R-Ladies community in order to make it sustainable.

R-Ladies’ first ten years were about growing the community: from being just one chapter in 2012 to becoming a global organization in 2016, and now fostering more than 230 chapters worldwide. But how can we face the challenges of growing an organization based solely on volunteer work?

In this talk, we discuss how good programming practices –such as modularity, refactoring, and testing– inspire the way we see the sustainable management of an ever-growing community. To that end, we will present our most recent efforts at creating and documenting workflows, distributing the workload, and automating tasks that allow volunteers to focus their time where it is most needed.

After watching this talk, you will get some ideas on how to support volunteers in your own community or project, and on how to use GitHub Actions to automate workflows and tasks.

Succeed in the Life Sciences with R/Python and the Cloud - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Colby Ford

This talk covers best practices and lessons learned surrounding the use of R and Python by technical teams in the cloud, focusing on Posit Workbench, Azure ML, and Databricks.

In the life sciences, whether it’s pharma, biotech, research, or another type of organization, we are unique in that we blend scientific knowledge with technical skills to extract insights from large, complex datasets. In the cloud, we can architect solutions to help us scale, automate, and collaborate. Interestingly, the use of R and Python by bioinformatics, genomics, biostatistics, and data science teams can be challenging in a cloud-first world where all the data is somewhere other than your laptop (like a data lake).

In this talk, I will share best practices and lessons learned surrounding the use of R and Python by technical teams in the cloud. We’ll focus on the use of Posit Workbench and RStudio on various cloud services such as Azure ML and Databricks.

Styling and Templating Quarto Documents - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Emil Hvitfeldt

Quarto is a powerful engine to generate documents, slides, books, websites, and more. The default aesthetics looks good, but there are times when you want and need to change how they look. This is that talk.

Whether you want your slides to stand out from the crowd, or you need your documents to fit within your corporate style guide, being able to style Quarto documents is a valuable skill.

Once you have persevered and created the perfect document, you don’t want the effort to go to waste. This is where templating comes in. Quarto makes it super easy to turn a styled document into a template to be used over and over again.

Speeding Up Plots in R/Shiny - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Ryszard Szymański

A slow plots can ruin the user experience of our dashboard. This talk covers techniques for speeding up the rendering process of our visualisations.

Slow dashboards lead to a poor user experience and cause users to lose interest, or even become frustrated. A common culprit of this situation is a slowly rendering plot.

During the talk, we will dive deeper into how plots are rendered in Shiny, identify common bottlenecks that can occur during the rendering process, and learn various techniques for improving the speed of plots in R/Shiny dashboards.

These techniques will range from more efficient data processing to library-specific optimisations at the browser level.

Solving a Secure Geocoding Problem (That Hardly Anybody Has) - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Tesla DuBois

Due to data security concerns, the strictest health researchers won’t send patient addresses to remote servers for geocoding. The only existing methods for offline geocoding are expensive, cumbersome, or require working with code - all limiting factors for many researchers. So, a couple of classmates and I made a standalone desktop application using shell, Docker, PostGIS, and Python to geocode addresses through a simple GUI without ever sending them off the local machine. Come for the technical ins and outs and stay for the anecdotes about how my R background played into the daunting, frustrating, but ultimately successful task of creating a data science tool using unfamiliar technologies.

Small Package, Broad Impact: How I Discovered the Ultimate New Hire Hack - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Trang Le

Onboarding new hires can be a challenging process, but taking a problem-focused approach can make it more meaningful and rewarding. In this talk, I will share how I discovered the ultimate new hire hack by creating two small packages that gave me the confidence I needed when I started at BMS. Through building these packages, I not only learned R things like using bslib and making font files available for published dashboards, but also gained a deep understanding of my company’s internal systems and workflows, and connected with my team via lots of questions. The resulting packages are still heavily used today.

Join me to discover how small packages can have a broad impact and what hiring managers can do to help.

Siuba and duckdb: Analyzing Everything Everywhere All at Once - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Michael Chow

Every data analysis in Python starts with a big fork in the road: which DataFrame library should I use?

The DataFrame Decision locks you into different methods, with subtly different behavior::

• different table methods (e.g. polars .with_columns() vs pandas .assign())
• different column methods (e.g. polars .map_dict() vs pandas .map())

In this talk, I’ll discuss how siuba (a dplyr port to python) combines with duckdb (a crazy powerful sql engine) to provide a unified, dplyr-like interface for analyzing a wide range of data sources‚ whether pandas and polars DataFrames, parquet files in a cloud bucket, or pins on Posit Connect.

Finally, I’ll discuss recent experiments to more tightly integrate siuba and duckdb.

Side Effects of a Year of Blogging - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Millie Symns

A big part of being in the R community is sharing your knowledge in different forums, no matter how big or small. So what better way to do that than a blog? And what better way than using R and Posit products to build and maintain that blog and website? This was the route I took to challenge myself in putting myself out there more in the community to find my voice, share my knowledge and learn new things.

In this talk, I will reflect on lessons learned and gains I have spent the past year blogging and sharing my website for all to see. The side effects include professional and personal benefits - from a clear profile of my skills to the progression of the development of my art. You may leave inspired to try the challenge for yourself.

ShinyUiEditor: From Alpha to Powerful Shiny App Development Tool - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Nick Strayer

Since its alpha debut at last year’s conference, the ShinyUiEditor has experienced continuous development, evolving into a powerful tool for crafting Shiny app UIs. Some key enhancements include the integration of new bslib components and the editor’s ability to create or navigate to existing server bindings for inputs and outputs.

In addition to new features, the editor is now available as a VSCode extension enabling it to integrate smoothly into more developers’ workflows. This talk will showcase how these new capabilities empower users to efficiently create visually appealing and production-ready applications with ease.

Shiny New Tools for Scaling your Shiny Apps - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Joe Kirincic

So you have a Shiny app your org loves, but as adoption grows, performance starts getting sluggish. Profiling reveals your cool interactive plots are the culprit. What can you do to make things snappy again? We can increase the number of app instances, sure, but suppose that isn’t an option for us. Another approach is to shift the plotting work from the server onto the client.

In this talk, we’ll learn how to leverage two Javascript projects, DuckDB-WASM and Observable’s Plot.js, in our Shiny app to create fast, flexible interactive visualizations in the browser without burdening our app’s server function. The end result is an app that can scale to more users without needing to increase compute resources.

Shiny for Python Machine Learning Apps with pandas, scikit-learn and TensorFlow - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Chelsea Parlett-Pelleriti

With the introduction of Shiny for Python in 2022, users can now use the power of reactivity with their favorite Python packages. Shiny can be used to build interactive reports, dashboards, and web apps, that make sharing insights and results both simple and dynamic. This includes apps to display and explore popular Machine Learning models built with staple Python packages like pandas, scikit-learn, and TensorFlow. This talk will demonstrate how to build simple Shiny for Python apps that interface with these packages, and discuss some of the benefits of using Shiny for Python to build your web apps.

Shiny Developer Secrets: Insights From Over 1200 Applicants and What You MUST Know to Shine

Presented by Vedha Viyash

Over 1,200 candidates applied for the R/Shiny developer role at Appsilon in the last year, and I will be sharing some insights that we have gained from going through the qualitative and quantitative feedback collected from every round of the interview process.

I will be sharing some key takeaways that would help you focus on things that will make you a better Shiny developer. From reactivity to software testing, there are multiple skills that make up a good Shiny developer and you will get to know the major gaps and how to focus on them.

Serenity Now, Productivity Later: Focus Your Project Stack with The Gonzalez Matrix - posit::conf

Presented by Patrick Tennant

How should you respond when your boss has too many good ideas for data science projects? In this talk, I’ll review our use of an adapted version of the Eisenhower Matrix that lays out our projects according to the effort required and the value they will produce. Given the functionally unlimited number of data science projects a team could do, learn how we keep our team focused on valuable work while reducing the stress of a never-ending list of projects.

Scale Your Data Validation Workflow With {pointblank} and Posit Connect - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Michael Garcia

For the Data Services team at Medable, our number one priority is to ensure the data we collect and deliver to our clients is of the highest quality. The {pointblank} package, along with Posit Connect, modernizes how we tackle data validation within Data Services.

In this talk, I will briefly summarize how we develop test code with {pointblank}, share with {pins}, execute with {rmarkdown}, and report findings with {blastula}. Finally, I will show how we aggregate data from test results across projects into a holistic view using {shiny}.

Running R-Shiny without a Server - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Joe Cheng

A year ago, Posit announced ShinyLive, a deployment mode of Shiny that lets you run interactive applications written in Python, without actually running a Python server at runtime. Instead, ShinyLive turns Shiny for Python apps into pure client-side apps, running on a pure client-side Python installation.

Now, that same capability has come to Shiny for R, thanks to the webR project.

In this talk, I’ll show you how you can get started with ShinyLive for R, and why this is more interesting than just cheaper app hosting. I’ll talk about some of the different use cases we had in mind for ShinyLive, and help you decide if ShinyLive makes sense for your app.

Reproducible Manuscripts with Quarto - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel

In this talk, we present a new capability in Quarto that provides a straightforward and user-friendly approach to creating truly reproducible manuscripts that are publication-ready for submission to popular journals. This new feature, Quarto manuscripts, includes the ability to produce a bundled output containing a standardized journal format, source documents, source computations, referenced resources, and execution information into a single bundle that is ingested into journal review and production processes. We’ll demo how Quarto manuscripts work and how you can incorporate them into your current manuscript development process as well as touch on pain points in your current workflow that Quarto manuscripts help alleviate.

Reliable Maintenance of Machine Learning Models - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Julia Silge

Maintaining machine learning models in production can be quite different from maintaining general software projects, because of the unique statistical characteristics of ML models.

In this talk, learn about model drift, the different ways the word “performance” is used with models, what you can monitor about a model, how feedback loops impact models, and how you can use vetiver to set yourself up for success with model maintenance. This talk will help practitioners who are already deploying models, but this is also useful knowledge for practitioners earlier in their MLOps journey; decisions made along the way can make the difference between resilient models that are easier to maintain and disappointing or misleading models.

R! You Going?! - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by SherAaron Hurt

3 things to remember when starting your journey to become a data scientist

Everyone will have a different journey when becoming a data scientist. However, there are a few tips to consider to make the journey less daunting and more enjoyable. Listen, as I tell my story as a data scientist and offer resources and tips to build confidence for those who are new to their journey. The tools are available however, it is not always easy to find them.

keywords: openscience, The Carpentries, R programming language, GPS, data science journey, data science resources

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R Not Only In Production - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Kara Woo

I will share what our team has learned from successfully integrating R in all areas of our company’s operations. InsightRX is a precision medicine company whose goal is to ensure that each patient receives the right drug at the optimal dose. At InsightRX, R is a first-class language that’s used for purposes ranging from customer-facing products to internal data infrastructure, new product prototypes, and regulatory reporting. Using R in this way has given us the opportunity to forge fruitful collaborations with other teams in which we can both learn and teach.

Join me as I share how the skills of data science and engineering can complement each other to create better products and greater impact.

Quickly get your Quarto HTML theme in order - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Greg Swinehart

A 5-minute talk to discuss how I’ve used Quarto and Bootstrap variables to quickly make Shiny’s new website look as it should. The Quarto user I have in mind works at an organization with specific brand guidelines to follow. I‚ will discuss how to set up your theme, show some key Quarto settings, and how Bootstrap‚ Sass variables are your best friend.

Parameterized Quarto Reports Improve Understanding of Soil Health - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Jadey Ryan

Learn how to use R and Quarto parameterized reporting in this four-step workflow to automate custom HTML and Word reports that are thoughtfully designed for audience interpretation and accessibility.

Soil health data are notoriously challenging to tidy and effectively communicate to farmers. We used functional programming with the tidyverse to reproducibly streamline data cleaning and summarization. To improve project outreach, we developed a Quarto project to dynamically create interactive HTML reports and printable PDFs. Custom to every farmer, reports include project goals, measured parameter descriptions, summary statistics, maps, tables, and graphs.

Our case study presents a workflow for data preparation and parameterized reporting, with best practices for effective data visualization, interpretation, and accessibility.

Package Management for Data Scientists - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Tyler Finethy

In my talk, “Package Management for Data Scientists,” we will discuss software dependencies for R and Python and the common issues faced during package installations. I will begin with an overview of package management, highlighting its crucial role in data science. We’ll then focus on practical strategies to prevent dependency errors and address effective troubleshooting when these problems occur. Lastly, we will look towards the future, discussing potential package management improvements, focusing on reproducibility and accessibility for those new to the field.

Open Source Solutions to Next-Generation Submissions, After 30 Years of Industry Experience

Presented by Mike K Smith

The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing rapid change, driven by a desire from both industry and regulatory agencies to move to more interactive visualizations and web applications to review data and make decisions. These changes would have been unthinkable 30 years ago when I started working at Pfizer.

In this talk, I’ll consider the drivers for these changes, how open-source tools can help achieve this, and why collaboration across the industry is vital to achieving this goal. I’ll contrast this with my experience of 30 years working in the pharma industry - when the R language had only just been released, when the internet was new, and when submissions to agencies were printed out, loaded onto trucks, and shipped to their doors.

Open Source Property Assessment: Tidymodels to Allocate $16B in Property Taxes - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Nicole Jardine and Dan Snow

How the Cook County Assessor’s Office uses R and tidymodels for its residential property valuation models.

The Cook County Assessor’s Office (CCAO) determines the current market value of properties for the purpose of property taxation. Since 2020, the CCAO has used R, tidymodels, and LightGBM to build predictive models that value Cook County’s 1.5 million residential properties, which are collectively worth over $400B. These predictive models are open-source, easily replicable, and have significantly improved valuation accuracy and equity over time.

Join CCAO Chief Data Officer Nicole Jardine and Director of Data Science Dan Snow as they walk through the CCAO’s modeling process, shares lessons learned, and offer a sneak peek at changes planned for the 2024 reassessment of Chicago.

Oops I’m a Manager - On More Effective 1-on-1 Meetings - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Andrew Holz

As a team leader (accidental or not), it’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind and overlook the importance of 1-on-1s. Bad idea. 1-on-1s are critical for building trust, providing feedback, and ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

Keys to good 1-on-1s start with a small amount of prep and a running shared document of notes and takeaways. Another key is to rotate types of 1-on-1s. Possibilities include “heads down” on recent work, “heads up” looking further out, and career-focused sessions. After some tips on the right sort of questions and uncovering sneaky issues, I will also touch on effective feedback.

I will share resources and hope to include Seussian visuals and a few poetic lines to help the key points stick.

Never again in outer par mode: making next-generation PDFs with Quarto & typst - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Carlos Scheidegger

Quarto 1.4 will introduce support for Typst. Typst is a brand-new open-source typesetting system built from scratch to support the lessons we have learned over almost half a century of high-quality computer typesetting that TeX and LaTeX have enabled. If you’ve ever had to produce a PDF with Quarto and got stuck handling an inscrutable error message from LaTeX, or wanted to create a new template but were too intimated by LaTeX’s arcane syntax, this talk is for you. I’ll show you why we need an alternative for TeX and LaTeX , and why it will make Quarto even better.

Motley Crews: Collaborating with Quarto - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Susan McMillan, Wyl Schuth, and Michael Zenz

Adoption of Quarto for document creation has transformed the collaborative workflow for our small higher-education analytics team. Historically, content experts wrote in Word documents and data analysts used R for statistics and graphics. Specialization in different software tools created challenges for producing collaborative analytic reports, but Quarto has solved this problem. We will describe how we use Quarto for writing and editing text, embedding statistical analysis and graphics, and producing reports with a standard style in multiple formats, including web pages.

Matching Tools to Titans: Tailoring Posit Workbench for Every Cloud - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by James Blair

In an era of diverse cloud platforms, leveraging tools effectively is paramount. This talk highlights the adaptability of Posit Workbench within leading cloud platforms. Delve into strategic integrations, understand key challenges, and uncover practical solutions. By the end, attendees will be equipped with insights to harness Posit Workbench’s capabilities seamlessly across varied cloud environments.

Making a (Python) Web App is easy! - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Marcos Huerta

Making Python Web apps using Dash, Streamlit, and Shiny for Python

This talk describes how to make distribution-free prediction intervals for regression models via the tidymodels framework.

By creating and deploying an interactive web application you can better share your data, code, and ideas easily with a broad audience. I plan to talk about several Python web application frameworks, and how you can use them to turn a class, function, or data set visualization into an interactive web page to share with the world. I plan to discuss building simple web applications with Plotly Dash, Streamlit, and Shiny for Python.

Materials:

Magic with WebAssembly and webR - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by George Stagg

Earlier this year the initial version of webR was released and users have begun building new interactive experiences with R on the web. In this talk, I’ll discuss webR’s TypeScript library and what it is able to do. The library allows users to interact with the R environment directly from JavaScript, which enables manipulation tricks that seem like magic. I’ll begin by describing how to move objects from R to JS and back again, and discuss the technology that makes this possible. I’ll continue with more advanced manipulation, such as invoking R functions from JS and talk about why you might want to do so. Finally, I’ll describe how messages are sent over webR’s communication channel and explain how this enables webR to work with Shinylive.

Large Language Models in RStudio - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by James Wade

Large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, have shown the potential to transform how we code. As an R package developer, I have contributed to the creation of two packages – gptstudio and gpttools – specifically designed to incorporate LLMs into R workflows within the RStudio environment.

The integration of ChatGPT allows users to efficiently add code comments, debug scripts, and address complex coding challenges directly from RStudio. With text embedding and semantic search, we can teach ChatGPT new tricks, resulting in more precise and context-aware responses. This talk will delve into hands-on examples to showcase the practical application of these models, as well as offer my perspective as a recent entrant into public package development.

It’s All About Perspective: Making a Case for Generative Art - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Meghan Santiago Harris

This talk explores how to create art in the R language while highlighting some similarities between the skills required for creating generative art and those needed to perform data science tasks in R.

Because the field of data science is inherently task-oriented, it is no wonder that most people struggle to see the utility of generative art past the bounds of a casual hobby. This talk will invite the participant to learn about generative art while focusing on ““why”” people should create it and its potential place in data science. This talk is suitable for all disciplines and artistic abilities. Furthermore, this talk will aim to expand the participant’s perspective on generative art with the following concepts:

• What is generative art and how can it be created in R or Python
• Justifications for generative art within Data Science
• Examples of programming skills that are transferrable between generative art and pragmatic data science projects

Materials:

It’s Abstractions All the Way Down… - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by JD Long

Abstractions rule everything around us. JD Long talks about abstractions from the board room to the silicon.

Over 20 years ago Joel Spolsky famously wrote, “All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky.” Unsurprisingly this has not changed. However, we have introduced more and more layers of abstraction into our workflows: Virtual Machines, AWS services, WASM, Docker, R, Python, data frames, and on and on. But then on top of the computational abstractions we have people abstractions: managers, colleagues, executives, stakeholders, etc.

JD’s presentation will be a wild romp through the mental models of abstractions and discuss how we, as technical analytical types, can gain skill in traversing abstractions and dealing with leaks.

It’s a Great Time to be an R Package Developer! - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Jenny Bryan and Hadley Wickham

(Due to unforeseen circumstances, Hadley Wickham presented this talk “slide karaoke” style, from materials prepared by Jenny Bryan.)

In R, the fundamental unit of shareable code is the package. As of March 2023, there were over 19,000 packages available on CRAN. Hadley Wickham and I recently updated the R Packages book for a second edition, which brought home just how much the package development landscape has changed in recent years (for the better!).

In this talk, I highlight recent-ish developments that I think have a great payoff for package maintainers. I’ll talk about the impact of new services like GitHub Actions, new tools like pkgdown, and emerging shared practices, such as principles that are helpful when testing a package.

Insights in 5-D! (Using magic small-multiples layouts) - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Matt Dzugan

Using Small-Multiples (faceted graphs) is an effective way to compare patterns across many dimensions. In this talk, I’ll walk you through some ways to lay out your individual facets according to the underlying data. For example, maybe each facet represents a city or point on a 2D plane - we’ll explore ways to organize facets in a grid that mimics the data itself - unlocking your ability to explore patterns in 4+ dimensions. Other solutions to this problem rely on manually-curated lists that map common layouts to a grid, but in this talk, we’ll explore solutions that work on EVERYTHING. I’ll show you how to incorporate this technique into your viz and how I built the libraries since there are some interesting data science concepts at play.

In-Process Analytical Data Management with DuckDB - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Hannes Mühleisen

This talks introduces DuckDB, an in-process analytical data management system that is deeply integrated into the R ecosystem.

DuckDB is an in-process analytical data management system. DuckDB supports complex SQL queries, has no external dependencies, and is deeply integrated into the R ecosystem. For example, DuckDB can run SQL queries directly on R data frames without any data transfer. DuckDB uses state-of-the-art query processing techniques like vectorised execution and automatic parallelism. DuckDB is out-of-core capable, meaning that it is possible to process datasets far bigger than main memory. DuckDB is free and open source software under the MIT license.

In this talk, we will describe the user values of DuckDB, and how it can be used to improve their day-to-day lives through automatic parallelisation, efficient operators, and out-of-core operations.

Materials:

HTML and CSS for R Users - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Albert Rapp

You can get the most out of popular R tools by combining them with easy-to-learn HTML & CSS commands.

It’s easy to think that R users do not need HTML and CSS. After all, R is a language designed for data analysis, right? But the reality is that these web standards are everywhere, even in R. In fact, many great tools like {ggtext}, {gt}, {shiny}, and Quarto unlock their full potential when you know a little bit of HTML & CSS. In this talk, I will demonstrate specific examples where R users can benefit from HTML and CSS and show you how to get started with these two languages.

Materials:

How You Get Value as a 1-Person Posit Connect Team - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Sean Nguyen

Sean, a sole Posit Connect developer, shares his experience in delivering business impact. He narrates his transition from crafting one-off reports to developing and deploying robust data science web applications using Python and R with Posit Connect. Despite its common association with large enterprise teams, Sean demonstrates how Posit Connect can be effectively utilized in smaller settings. He presents his work on creating and deploying end-to-end machine learning pipelines in Python, hosting them as APIs, and seamlessly integrating with Shiny apps via Posit Connect. This talk imparts practical strategies and techniques to foster user and executive adoption of Posit Connect within lean (and large) organizations.

How to Win Friends and Influence People (With Data) - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Joe Powers

Too many great data science products never go into production. To persuade leaders and colleagues to adopt your data science offering, you must translate your insights into terms that are relevant and accessible to them. Attempts to persuade these audiences with proofs and model performance stats will often fall flat because the audience is left feeling overwhelmed.

This talk will demonstrate the data simulation, visualization, and story-telling techniques that I use to influence leadership and the community-building techniques I use to earn the trust and support of fellow analysts. These efforts were successful in persuading Intuit to adopt advanced analytic methods like sequential analysis that cut the duration of our AB tests by over 60%.

How to Keep Your Data Science Meetup Sustainable - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Ted Laderas

Many data science meetup organizers struggle with burnout. It can be daunting to plan a meetup schedule, especially with the added burden of work and life.

In this talk, I want to highlight some strategies for keeping your data science meetup sustainable. Specifically, I want to highlight the role of self-care in growing and sustaining your group, as well as low-key activities like a data scavenger hunt, watching videos together, styling plots together, and sharing useful tidyverse functions.

By making it easy for your members to contribute and empowering them, it takes a lot of the burden off you as an organizer. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel for meetups or have famous guests for each one. Let’s start the conversation and make your meetup last.

How to Help Developers Make Apps Users Love - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Michał Parkoła

There are many resources that can help you design better apps.

But what if your org creates many apps?

Scaling good design to larger groups dials the challenge up to 11.

In this talk, I will share how we approach the problem at Appsilon.

• I will present our in-house Design Guide.
• I will share the successes and failures we’ve had building it and helping a wide variety of developers use it
• I will then share some tips about what you might want to consider if you want to help your org build better apps at scale.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Public Packages - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Joe Roberts

The popularity of R and Python for data science is in no small part attributable to the vast collection of extension packages available for everything from common tasks like data cleaning to highly-specialized domain-specific functions. However, with that ease of sharing packages comes a larger target for bad actors trying to exploit them. We’ll explore these security risks along with approaches you can take to mitigate them using Posit Package Manager.

How Data Scientists Broke A/B Testing (And How We Can Fix It) - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Carl Vogel

As data scientists, we care about making valid statistical inferences from experiments. And we’ve adapted well-established and well-understood statistical methods to help us do so in our A/B tests. Our stakeholders, though, care about making good product decisions efficiently. I’ll describe how the way we design A/B tests can put these goals in tension and why that often causes misalignment between how A/B tests are intended to be used and how they are actually used. I’ll also talk about how I’ve used R to implement alternative experimental approaches that have helped bridge the gap between data scientists and stakeholders.

Hitting the Target(s) of Data Orchestration - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Alexandros Kouretsis

We are living at a time when the size of datasets can be overwhelming. Add to this that their process involves linking together different computing systems and software, and integrating dynamically changing reference data, and for sure, you have a problem. Reproducibility, traceability, and transparency have left the building.

Here is where Posit Connect along with the vast R ecosystem comes to save the day, allowing the creation of reproducible pipelines. I will share with you my first-hand experience in this presentation. In particular, how we used Targets in Posit Connect combined with AWS technologies in a bioinformatics pipeline. The result? An effective and secure workflow orchestration that is scalable and advances knowledge.

Grammar of Graphics in Python with Plotnine - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Hassan Kibirige

{plotnine} brings the elegance of {ggplot2} to the Python programming language. Learn about The Grammar of Graphics and get a feel of why it is an effective way to create Statistical Graphics.

ggplot2 is one of the most loved visualisation libraries. It implements a Grammar of Graphics system, which requires one to think about data in terms of columns of variables and how to transform them into geometric objects. It is elegant and powerful. This is a talk about plotnine, which brings the elegance of ggplot2 to the Python programming language. It is an invitation to learn about the Grammar of Graphics system and to appreciate it. It will include some tips on how to avoid common frustrations as you learn the system.

Materials:

Github Copilot integration with RStudio, it’s finally here! - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Tom Mock

This talk closes issue #10148, “Github Copilot integration with RStudio”, the most upvoted feature request in RStudio’s history. Code generating AI tools like Github Copilot‚ promise an “AI pair programmer that offers autocomplete-style suggestions as you code”. For the first time, we’ll show a native integration of Copilot into RStudio, helping to build on that promise by providing AI-generated “ghost text” autocompletion with R and other languages. I’ll also provide a comparison of Copilot’s “ghost text” to a chat-style interface in RStudio via the {chattr} package from the Posit MLVerse team.

To make the most of these new features, I’ll walk through some examples of how sharing additional context, comments, code, and other “prompt engineering” can help you go from code-generating AI tools that feels like an annoying backseat driver to an experienced copilot. We’ll close with a robust end-to-end example of how these new RStudio integrations and packages can help you be a more productive developer.

Getting the Most Out of Git - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Colin Gillespie

Did you believe that Git will solve all of your data science worries? Instead, you’ve been plunged HEAD~1 first into merging (or is that rebasing?) chaos. Issues are ignored, branches are everywhere, main never works, and no one really knows who owns the repository.

Don’t worry! There are ways to escape this pit of despair. Over the last few years, we’ve worked with many data science teams. During this time, we’ve spotted common patterns and also common pitfalls. While one size does not fit all, there are golden rules that should be followed. At the end of this talk, you’ll understand the processes other data science teams implement to make Git work for them.

From Novices to Experts: Building a Community of Engaged R Users - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Natalia Andriychuk

At Pfizer, we have over 1500 users with R installed on their machines, along with an R community on MS Teams comprising over a thousand colleagues globally. How can we effectively engage with Pfizer R users and celebrate the successes of this community, while sharing best practices? Additionally, how do we avoid isolated groups duplicating efforts to solve R-related problems across different parts of the organization?

To address these challenges, we established the Pfizer R Center of Excellence (CoE) in early 2022. We focus our efforts on bringing together a rapidly growing community of colleagues, providing technical expertise, and offering best-practice guidance. A well-established, maintained and engaged R community promotes an inclusive and supportive learning environment that drives innovation within organizations. Our aim is to help colleagues thrive in their R journey, regardless of their expertise level.

During my talk, I will share the techniques we used to build a supportive R community, the tools employed to increase community engagement, and the successes and challenges encountered in building an engaging community of R users.

From Journalist to Coder: Creating a Web Publication with Quarto - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Brian Tarran

This is the story of how a Royal Statistical Society writer discovered Quarto, learned how to code (a bit), and built realworlddatascience.net, an online publication for the data science community.

In March 2022, I was tasked by the Royal Statistical Society with creating a new online publication: a data science website for data science professionals. I’ve been a print journalist for 20 years and have worked on websites in that time, but my coding ability began and ended with wrapping href tags around text and images. That is until I discovered Quarto. In this talk, I describe how I explored, learned, and fell in love with the Quarto publishing system, how I used it to build a website – Real World Data Science (realworlddatascience.net) – and how the open source community mindset helped shape my thinking about what a new publication could and should be!

From Data Confusion to Data Intelligence - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Elaine McVey and David Meza

Data science teams operate in a unique environment, much different than the IT or software development life cycle. Hope from executives for the impact of data science is extremely high! Understanding of how to make data science efforts successful is very low! This creates an interesting set of organizational challenges for data and analytics teams. These are particularly clear when data science is being introduced at new companies, but plays out at organizations of all sizes. So, how do we navigate this dynamic? We will share some strategies for success.

From Concept to Impact: Building and Launching Shiny Apps in the Workplace - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Tiger Tang

Learn to build and launch a Shiny app like you are working on a start-up!

Unlock the potential of Shiny apps for your organization! Join Tiger as he shares insights from implementing Shiny apps at his workplace, handling over 160,000 internal requests. Discover a practical mindmap to find, build, and enhance Shiny app use cases, ensuring robustness and improved user engagement.

FOCAL Point: Utilizing Python, R, and Shiny to Capture, Process, and Visualize Motion - posit::conf

Presented by Justin Markel & Alyssa Burritt

One of the fastest movements in modern sports is a golf swing. Capturing this motion using a high-speed camera system creates many unique challenges in processing, analyzing, and visualizing the thousands of data points that are generated. These spatial coordinates can be quickly translated through Python scripts to well-known, industry-specific performance metrics and graphics in Shiny. Down the line, R utilities aid more complicated analyses and optimizations, driving new product innovations.

This talk will cover our company’s process of implementing these tools into our workflow and highlight key program features that have helped successfully combine these applications for users with a variety of technical backgrounds.

Field Guide to Writing Your First R Package - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Fonti Kar

I recall writing my first package being an intimidating task. In my talk, I will share how a Biologist’s mindset can make R package writing more approachable. This talk is an encouragement and a gentle stroll through the package building process. I will show you ways to be curious when you get stuck and how to prepare for the unexpected. I hope sharing my perspective will help others see package development as wonderful as the natural world and dispel any hesitation to start!

Extending Quarto - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Richard Iannone

What are Quarto shortcode extensions? Think of them as powerful little programs you can run in your Quarto docs. I won’t show you how to build a shortcode extension during this talk but rather I’m going to take you on a trip across this new ecosystem of shortcode extensions that people have already written. For example, I’ll introduce you to the fancy-text extension for outputting nicely-formatted versions of fancy strings such as LaTeX and BibTeX; you’ll learn all about the fontawesome, lordicon, academicons, material-icons, and bsicons shortcode extensions that let you add all sorts of icons. This is only a sampling of the shortcode extensions I will present, there will be many other inspiring examples as well.

epoxy: Super Glue for Data-driven Reports and Shiny Apps - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Garrick Aden-Buie

R Markdown, Quarto, and Shiny are powerful frameworks that allow authors to create data-driven reports and apps. But truly excellent reports require a lot of work in the final steps to get numerical and stylistic formatting just right.

{epoxy} is a new package that uses {glue} to give authors templating superpowers. Epoxy works in R Markdown and Quarto, in markdown, LaTeX, and HTML outputs. It also provides easy templating for Shiny apps for dynamic data-driven reporting.

Beyond epoxy’s features, this talk will also touch on tips and approaches for data-driven reporting that will be useful to a wide audience, from R Markdown experts to the Quarto and Shiny curious.

Dynamic Interactions: webR to Empower Educators & Researchers with Interactive Quarto Docs

Presented by James Balamuta

Full talk title: Dynamic Interactions: Empowering Educators and Researchers with Interactive Quarto Documents Using webR

Traditional Quarto documents often lack interactivity, limiting the ability of students and researchers to fully explore and engage with the presented topic. In this talk, we propose a novel approach that utilizes webR, a WebAssembly-powered version of R, to seamlessly embed R code directly within the browser without the need for a server. We demonstrate how this approach can transform static Quarto documents into dynamic examples by leveraging webR’s capabilities through standard Quarto code cells, enabling real-time execution of R code and dynamic display of results. Our approach empowers educators and researchers alike to harness the power of interactivity and reproducibility for enhanced learning and research experiences.

duckplyr: Tight Integration of duckdb with R and the tidyverse - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Kirill Müller

The duckplyr R package combines the convenience of dplyr with the performance of DuckDB. Better than dbplyr: Data frame in, data frame out, fully compatible with dplyr.

duckdb is the new high-performance analytical database system that works great with R, Python, and other host systems. dplyr is the grammar of data manipulation in the tidyverse, tightly integrated with R, but it works best for small or medium-sized data. The former has been designed with large or big data in mind, but currently, you need to formulate your queries in SQL.

The new duckplyr package offers the best of both worlds. It transforms a dplyr pipe into a query object that duckdb can execute, using an optimized query plan. It is better than dbplyr because the interface is “data frames in, data frames out”, and no intermediate SQL code is generated.

The talk first presents our results, a bit of the mechanics, and an outlook for this ambitious project.

dplyr 1.1.0 Features You Can’t Live Without - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Davis Vaughan

Did you enjoy my clickbait title? Did it work? Either way, welcome!

The dplyr 1.1.0 release included a number of new features, such as:

• Per-operation grouping with .by
• An overhaul to joins, including new inequality and rolling joins
• New consecutive_id() and case_match() helpers
• Significant performance improvements in arrange()

Join me as we take a tour of this exciting dplyr update, and learn how to use these new features in your own work!

Diversify Your Career with Shiny for Python - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Gordon Shotwell

A few years ago my company made a sudden shift from R to Python which was quite bad for my career because I didn’t really know Python. The main issue was that I couldn’t find a niche that allowed me to use my existing knowledge while learning the new language.

Shiny for Python is a great niche for R users because none of the Python web frameworks can do what Shiny can do. Additionally, almost all of your knowledge of the R package is applicable to the Python one.

This talk will provide an overview of the Python web application landscape and articulate what Shiny adds to this landscape, and then go through the five things that R users need to know before developing their first Shiny for Python application.

Developing a Prototyping Competency in a Statistical Science Organization - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Daniel Woodie

The introduction of new tools, methods, and processes can be a struggle within a statistical science organization. Being deliberate and investing in the creation of a prototyping competency can help in accelerating progress. Prototyping allows organizations to quickly experiment with new ideas, reduce the risk of failure, identify potential issues early, and iterate until the desired outcome is achieved.

I will highlight the key areas we have focused on accelerating, our framework for developing this competency, how we use Shiny, and the lessons we’ve learned along the way. Developing a prototyping competency is crucial for statistical science organizations that wish to stay competitive and innovative in today’s rapidly changing landscape.

Democratizing Access to Education Data - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Erika Tyagi

Learn how the Urban Institute is making high-quality data more accessible through the Education Data Portal.

Every year, government agencies release large amounts of data on schools and colleges, but this information is scattered across various websites and is often difficult to use. To make these data more accessible, the Urban Institute built the Education Data Portal, a freely available one-stop shop for harmonized data and metadata for nearly all major federal education datasets. In this talk, we’ll demonstrate how the portal works and share lessons we’ve learned about making data accessible to users with varying technical skills and preferred programming languages.

dbtplyr: Bringing Column-Name Contracts from R to dbt - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Emily Riederer

starts_with(language): Translating select helpers to dbt. Translating syntax between languages transports concepts across communities. We see a case study of adapting a column-naming workflow from dplyr to dbt’s data engineering toolkit.

dplyr’s select helpers exemplify how the tidyverse uses opinionated design to push users into the pit of success. The ability to efficiently operate on names incentivizes good naming patterns and creates efficiency in data wrangling and validation.

However, in a polyglot world, users may find they must leave the pit when comparable syntactic sugar is not accessible in other languages like Python and SQL.

In this talk, I will explain how dplyr’s select helpers inspired my approach to ‘column name contracts,’ how good naming systems can help supercharge data management with packages like {dplyr} and {pointblank}, and my experience building the {dbtplyr} to port this functionality to dbt for building complex SQL-based data pipelines.

Materials:

Data Visualization with Seaborn - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Michael Waskom

Seaborn is a Python library for statistical data visualization. After nearly a decade of development, seaborn recently introduced an entirely new API that is more explicitly based on a formal grammar of graphics. My talk will introduce this API and contrast it with the classic seaborn interface, sharing insights about the influence of the grammar of graphics on the ergonomics and maintainability of data visualization software.

Data Science in Production: The Way to a Centralized Infrastructure - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Oliver Bracht

In this talk, the success story of Covestro’s posit infrastructure is presented. The problem of the leading German material manufacturer was that no common development environment existed. With the help of eoda and Posit, a replicable, centralized development environment for R and Python was created. Although R and Python represent the core of the infrastructure, multiple languages and tools are unified. In addition to the collaboration of Covestro’s data science teams, compliance guidelines could also be better fulfilled. The staging architecture hereby provides developers with a concept for testing and going live with their products. This project presents a best practice approach to a data science infrastructure using Covestro as an example.

CRAN-ial Expansion: Taking Your R Package Development to New Frontiers with R-Universe - posit::conf

Presented by Mo Athanasia Mowinckel

Say goodbye to installation headaches and hello to a universe of possibilities with R-Universe! Take your R package development to new frontiers by organizing and sharing packages beyond the bounds of CRAN. R-Universe’s reliable package-building process strengthens installation and usage instructions, resulting in fewer support requests and an easy installation experience for users. With webpages and an API for exploring packages, R-Universe creates a streamlined and tidy ecosystem for R-package constellations. Also, you can build a custom toolchain for your users, relieving your workload and empowering users to help themselves. Join me to learn how to explore the vastness of R-Universe and expand your package development possibilities!