Category Archives for Blog
Request for Resources: Teaching Computer Science Basics to R Programmers
One of the most enjoyable parts of my job is teaching R to our incoming analysts. These analysts are largely recent college graduates with a limited background in computer science and statistics. Historically my job has been to teach them the basics of the Tidyverse over 3 half-days. I’m writing today to see if anyone […]
Continue readingNew package on CRAN: zctaCrosswalk
I am happy to announce that my new R package, zctaCrosswalk, is now on CRAN. This package contains the US Census Bureau’s 2020 ZCTA to County Relationship File, as well as convenience functions to translate between States, Counties and ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs). You can install the package like this: install.packages(“zctaCrosswalk”) This package is […]
Continue readingchoroplethr 3.7.1 is now on CRAN
When I took my first software engineering job at Electronic Arts 20 years ago someone told me “More time is spent maintaining old software than writing new software.” Since my project at the time (“Spore”) was brand new, and I was writing brand new code for it, I found that hard to believe. My experience […]
Continue readingMy Courses are now Free
A few months ago I announced a change in direction: rather than continuing to focus on Choroplethr-related development and introductory R training, I was going to focus on the broader field of Analytics Engineering. Today I am happy to announce that that effort has resulted in a new job. I am joining a marketing analytics […]
Continue readingA Guide to SQL Window Functions for Data Analysts
I recently learned about a (somewhat) new feature in MySQL called Window functions. From the perspective of an analyst, Window functions are fantastic: they allow you derive more information about your data without leaving the database. This reduces your need for custom statistical software such as R. Unfortunately, most of the tutorials that I read […]
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