Publications by Oscar
Launch of R Screencasts
16 May 2022 A great way to learn how to analyze data or improve the skills you have is to watch experienced people do it. It’s handy if you have experienced colleagues around you, but what if your colleagues are too busy to help coach you, you’re still trying to break into data analysis or are one of the many analysts now working remotely? It...
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8 New Books added to Big Book of R
29 May 2022 We’re closing in on the next milestone of 300 unique entries in Big Book of R! Today’s update has a bunch of really interesting additions, and thanks to Staurt Lodge and Tim Hendriks for some of the submissions. Before we dive into them, I want to let you know of a super short post I published recently giving some data cleaning ...
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Part 1 of 3: 300+ milestone for Big Book of R
We’ve done it folks! Over 300 free R programming books are now available at www.BigBookofR.com. Of the 343 entries available, 20 are paid products and the rest are all 100% free. Thanks to all the authors, contributors, users readers and cheerleaders who are helping build a rich ecosystem of material. This latest edition of new entries is a w...
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Part 2 of 3: 300+ milestone for Big Book of R
This is part 2 of a 3 part series highlighting a selection of 35 new entries into Big Book of R. Read part 1. The site now has well over 300 free R programming titles. Onto the second batch of new books! Sign up to the newsletter for the next update happening in a few days. Handling Strings With R by Gaston Sanchez Handling character strings ...
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Part 3 of 3: 300+ milestone for Big Book of R
This post is the final installment of a 3-part series highlighting 35 new entries to Big Book of R. Read part 1 and part 2. The site now has well over 300 free R programming titles. Onto the third batch of new books! Financial Econometrics – R Tutorial Guidance by Yizhi Wang, Samuel Vigne This is an R tutorial book for Financial Econometri...
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I’ve co-authored a book! Twitter for R Programmers
People using R for analysis or data science might have heard that the R community is really active on Twitter, but feel a bit lost when trying to figure out how to use Twitter. Like most social media apps, there’s a bit of a learning curve to get going. In an effort to help newcomers get the most out of Twitter and join the great community, I h...
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A roadmap for getting started with R
Some folks at work expressed an interest in how to get started learning R. There are lots of resources out there, but I thought I’d share with you what I shared with them as a pathway that I followed that’s working out well for me. You don’t need all these steps but I suggested starting from 1 and working your way through them that way. Re...
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First thoughts on a community-driven R learning platform
I’ve been mulling over some things. I hope that by sharing them, it will spark some inspiration for others. I think R needs a good, comprehensive and curated learning platform. Ever since you-know-who did you-know-what and then the leadership proceeded to shoot themselves in both feet, and after running out of feet, shoot themselves wherever ...
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Hiring a data analyst
In late 2020 I was hiring for a data analyst role. We were looking for someone with domain expertise, R and some SQL if possible. That alone is a long wishlist ;). Originally this post started as a twitter thread which you can find a link to at the end. These are the notes I was taking while reviewing about 100 applications for the role. Hopefu...
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A real-world, messy dataset to practice on
At some point you may be looking for a “real world” dataset to practice analysis on or to give to students. The value of such data is that it gives analysts a chance to develop skills they need for their work, but are hard to master when given “clean” datasets, especially inside a guided course. I’ve found this dataset below which, ...
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