Publications by R on Nicola Rennie
Creating R tutorial worksheets (with and without solutions) using Quarto
When I’m teaching R, I often have exercise questions for students to work through during our workshop sessions. So I need to create a tutorial worksheet. Although we often go through solutions to the exercises in the workshop, I also want to create a solutions sheet that students can take home – containing the answers to the questions and some ...
7960 sym R (1073 sym/16 pcs) 4 img 8 tbl
A webR powered Shiny app for browsing TidyTuesday plots
A Shiny app that automatically updates every week without the need to re-deploy it? Without the need to host a server running R? Sound too good to be true? It’s not. Read on for an overview of how I built a Shiny app to browse and display my #TidyTuesday plots, which automatically updates every time I make a new plot. What is #TidyTuesday? For t...
12439 sym R (7555 sym/30 pcs) 6 img 15 tbl
Answering some ‘Forecasting with GAMs in R’ questions
Last week I had the pleasure of running the Forecasting with generalised additive models (GAMS) in R workshop organised by Forecasting for Social Good. During the workshop, we covered what GAMs are and why we might want to use them, fitting GAMs in R with {mgcv}, evaluating models, making forecasts, and some of the reasons that GAMs might not work...
7897 sym R (189 sym/6 pcs) 4 img 3 tbl
Four ways to streamline your R workflows
In previous years, when it gets to the end of the year, I’ve written blog posts about reflecting on a year of #TidyTuesday data visualisations, or making your own #RStats Wrapped in the style of SpotifyWrapped. This year, I wanted to reflect on some of the changes I’ve made to the way I write R code that have helped to streamline my workflows...
7751 sym 6 img
Creating typewriter-styled maps in {ggplot2}
A couple of months ago I read a blog post by RJ Andrews, in which he described the process of making a map of California using a typewriter. It’s a beautiful map – made using over 2,500 keystrokes, all done by hand. The density of ink for each letter displays the elevation. He notes that he’s not the first to make maps using a typewriter. I ...
6903 sym R (2436 sym/24 pcs) 16 img 12 tbl
Creating template files with R
Over the past few months, I’ve found myself fine-tuning the structure of my R scripts for #TidyTuesday, and each week they have similar sections: load packages, load data, data wrangling, make a plot, save the plot, and so on. What I’ve ended up doing recently is copying and pasting the script from the previous week, and then removing the unne...
7276 sym R (6502 sym/22 pcs) 4 img 11 tbl
Adding social media icons to charts with {ggplot2}
When I’ve created data visualisations with {ggplot2} recently, I’ve been adding icons with my social media details in the caption. It’s a great, concise way to put your name on your work, and make it easy for people to find your profile if they see your work elsewhere. Tanya Shapiro was the first person I saw doing this in R – so full cred...
5318 sym R (589 sym/10 pcs) 10 img 5 tbl
Learning Julia with #TidyTuesday and Tidier.jl
Learning a new programming language can be tricky, and it can sometimes lead to more ways of getting confused – even in languages you know well! I always mix up len() and length()… When returning to Python after primarily working in R for a while, I found Shiny for Python a really good resource for learning. The concepts were similar enough th...
5713 sym R (1244 sym/16 pcs) 8 img 8 tbl
Introducing {ggflowchart}
Back in April 2022, I participated in the #30DayChartChallenge and for the Storytelling prompt on day 29 in the Uncertainty category, I created the Goldilocks Decision Tree. I also gave a talk to R-Ladies Nairobi on the challenge and used the flowchart as a live-coding example. A summary of the talk ended up as a blog post. The reactions were ...
5989 sym R (788 sym/14 pcs) 11 img 7 tbl
Creating a cracked egg plot using {ggplot2} in R
You can’t make an R plot without breaking eggs… that’s how the saying goes, right? A recent #TidyTuesday data set explored US egg production and, thanks to an excellent suggestion from Tanya Shapiro to create a plot in the style of the Visual Capitalist US egg prices chart, and Deepali Kank’s incredible version of it, I decided to figur...
5572 sym R (4272 sym/30 pcs) 18 img 15 tbl