Blog Archives - Page 18 of 31

Jan 29

How Abidjan R User Group Is Leveraging Online Meetups To Go Beyond Borders

By R Consortium Blog

Anicet Ebou is a PhD student in Bioinformatics at the Institut National Polytechnique Félix HOUPHOUËT-BOIGNY de Yamoussoukro (INP-HB), Ivory Coast. He works as a bioinformatician to design tools and methods for molecular and agricultural data, and he is one of the lead organizers of Abidjan R user group.

Anicet talks to the R-consortium on the status of their community group especially during this post COVID era. He also shares the trends in the R language which he feels will affect the global R user community.

What is the R community like in the Ivory Coast?

Our community is medium-sized in terms of number of members. We have around 500 active members. The community is composed of people who are very interested in the R language. We have people from academia, students, professions in the field of data science, networks and IT.

Majority of the members come from academia. We have PhD students, researchers, university lecturers etc. Our members have done interesting projects in R which we keep in our Google Drive folder.

How has COVID affected your ability to connect with members?

When COVID hit our country, it was not easy for us because we had to find a new way to meet and continue with our programs. After realizing that the pandemic was not going away anytime soon, we switched to online.

All the meetings we had in 2020 were online, and we would have at least one physical meeting a month. In 2021 it was more difficult to have in-person meetings despite that the COVID situation was calm and the restrictions were lessened.

Our community members now prefer online meetings to physical ones. In 2020, we used to book a small room at one of the universities and invite only a few people to attend while the rest were streaming at home. I think this is what has made our members more inclined to online meetings than physical meetings. Whenever we call for a physical meeting, they always ask for an option to stream online.

In the past year, did you have to change your techniques to connect and collaborate with members? For example, did you use GitHub, video conferencing, online discussion groups more? Can these techniques be used to make your group more inclusive to people that are unable to attend physical events in the future?

What we have learned from 2020 through 2021 is that people are now used to having everything online. This has prompted us to switch to video conferencing for all our meetups. I think one of the mistakes we made in 2020 was that we were not quick to discern that our community was turning virtual.

We tried organizing in-person meetings in 2021, but the community was not reactive. We have learnt that it’s better to have on-site meetings only for bigger meetings like conferences, hands-on training, and leaving the rest for online. Online meetings are what people now prefer.

Apart from video conferencing, we have a Telegram channel where people ask questions and help one another. I believe these techniques are going to be more effective for us as a community because people are able to connect from anywhere.

Our online meetings always draw people from outside Abidjan and also from outside the country such as Senegal and Mali. Transitioning to online has eliminated geographical barriers.

Can you tell us about one recent presentation or speaker that was especially interesting and what was the topic and why was it so interesting?

We had Abraham Bio do a presentation on the use of Shiny to create web apps. It was interesting because it gave the participants an opportunity to see what R is capable of doing.

What trends do you see in R language affecting your organization over the next year?

What I have seen is that people are more interested with the use of spatial analysis in R, like how to draw maps, and view spatial data. People are also interested in linking R with Shiny to create web applications, and also how to transform data in R. These are the three major areas we are planning to address as a community this year.

Do you know of any data journalism efforts by your members? If not, are there particular data journalism projects that you’ve seen in the last year that you feel had a positive impact on society?

I haven’t seen any data journalism from any of our members, but it seems to be a trending topic in the data science space. We are thinking of having a meeting in line with that this year to motivate people who would want to go into this field.

Of the Funded Projects by the R Consortium, do you have a favorite project? Why is it your favorite?

My favorite is the Extendr – Rust extension for R because Rust is a new language and is memory safe. I feel it is a good language to get into R. I work with Rusty on a regular basis that’s why I love this project.

Of the Active Working Groups, which is your favorite? Why is it your favorite?

I really like the Distributed Computing in R working group because my day-to-day job involves working with algorithms and how to optimize them. This area interests me because everything we use in R involves data structures and making sure the design is perfect.

When is your next event? Please give details!

We have our next event in February. The executive team will be meeting soon to decide on the agenda and the date.

Jan 26

Love0

R-Ladies Galapagos Chapter on Collaborations, Challenges, and Opportunities During the Pandemic

By R Consortium Blog

R Consortium talked to Denisse Fierro Arcos of the R-Ladies Galapagos Chapter (also on Twitter) about the struggles of managing an R-Ladies group during the pandemic. Denisse talked about the close collaboration between three R-Ladies chapters in Ecuador and one in Colombia during the pandemic. With a shared YouTube channel, the Ecuadorian chapters are deeply committed to their shared goal of promoting R in Ecuador. Denisse also shared the challenge of internet connectivity issues in the Galapagos and her plans to overcome it.

Denisse is a Marine Biologist by training and started programming during her postgraduate studies. She developed a deep interest in programming and is passionate about teaching programming to people, who can then apply it to their research. R-Ladies has provided her with a platform to pursue her passion and reach out to more people through events and workshops.

What is the R community like in Ecuador?

The R community in Ecuador is small but growing, I would say. More and more people are getting interested in applying programming to whatever field they are in. Since the pandemic, our R-Ladies meetings are done online, we get a lot of participants not just from Ecuador, but also from other places in Latin America. Most of the R users in Ecuador apply it to business-related projects, but the use of R in biology is becoming more prevalent.

How has COVID affected your ability to connect with members?

So it has been good and bad in a way. It was good, as shifting to online events allowed us to reach many people all over the continent. It also led to our collaboration with four different R-Ladies Groups in Ecuador and Colombia, with whom we co-organized a series of workshops during 2021.

Because of internet connectivity issues in Galapagos, it is difficult to reach out to the local population. Many people suggested recording the sessions, just in case the internet drops and they can’t actually attend. This led us to start a YouTube channel together with other R-Ladies groups in Ecuador.

In the past year, did you have to change your techniques to connect and collaborate with members? For example, did you use GitHub, videoconferencing, online discussion groups more? Can these techniques be used to make your group more inclusive of people that cannot attend physical events in the future?

Yes, I have had to change the techniques I used to connect with members. When I started the Galapagos chapter, I was working with an organization that works on the conservation of the Galapagos. So through them, I could reach other organizations in the sphere. But after everything went online, it became a bit more difficult to reach out to potential participants.

A survey done in Latin America suggested that Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are the three main channels people used to find out about programming-related events and activities. And so we have used these platforms. In addition, we are also using platforms like Google Colab, in case people do not have R installed on their computer. While tools like Google Drive helped us organize all our events even when we were in different cities across the planet. We depended a lot on Zoom for our sessions as well.

Online events were a good thing in a way because anyone could connect from anywhere, but also not so good when people didn’t have a stable internet connection. I am still trying to figure out how to get around that. Possibly now that COVID-19 restrictions have loosened up a bit, we can create in-person sessions in places where there is a good stable internet connection, so participants can connect and take part that way.

Can you tell us about one recent presentation or speaker that was especially interesting and what was the topic and why was it so interesting?

The one that I liked the most was this series of workshops that we did with the four R-Ladies chapters. So essentially, we did a book club using the book “R for Data Science” by Hadley Wickham. Over six months, each R-Ladies chapter was in charge of a book chapter and we taught participants how to apply the concepts covered in that chapter.

It was really great experience because we had never really worked with people outside Ecuador before and also because we helped start a new R-Ladies chapter in Ecuador. I feel it was a really great way to collaborate and make new friends in the process.

What trends do you see in R language affecting your organization over the next year?

So at the moment, I am doing a Ph.D. and I am a little outside of my area of expertise, combining physical oceanography with marine biology. It is a challenge because not only they are two different fields of study but also because physics people usually use Python, while biologists use R. I think the trend in science is going to be that more people are going to use programming, whether it is R or Python. This is mostly because it is now really easy and less expensive to collect vast amounts of data and it would be impossible to analyze it using spreadsheets. In the future, I think researchers will use a combination of programming languages because each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Researchers will become better at programming and incorporate it into their work. And hopefully, we will start teaching these skills at university, because they are a must for researchers.

I don’t know of any members of R-Ladies, or any of the groups I am involved with, that are doing data journalism. But in Ecuador, there are a couple of groups that are doing a superb job of sharing information about science, specifically about open-source.

There is OpenLabEc, which completed a series of workshops in 2021 about open data, how people can apply that to whatever industry they are in. They also organized along with another organization, Datalat, a workshop about the principles of open data, which I attended earlier in 2021, thanks to a scholarship they offered.

There is also another group that does a podcast, which is available on various platforms, including Spotify. I usually listen to them, it is called Estacion DivulgaCiencia. It is a station that dedicates itself to science in general. They feature different aspects of science and they make it really accessible to the general public, so it’s nice and clear. I really enjoy listening to them. I think these groups are great because they make information more accessible to scientists and the general public.

Of the Funded Projects by the R Consortium, do you have a favorite project? Why is it your favorite?

It’s the R-Ladies, I really think that it is an excellent community. I have learned a lot through them. The reason I started the Galapagos chapter was that I was introduced to an R-Ladies group through an organization that I was working with, in Ecuador. And I really like how they try to help each other in becoming better at programming and teaching others. And I think that is the way forward and I quite like them.

When is your next event? Please give details!

We are in the planning stages at the moment of the next event. We are going to start a series of workshops, with other R-Ladies groups in Ecuador, particularly the one in Guayaquil. Through this series, we will teach people about R programming and a bit about statistics focusing on biology and ecology.

We did something similar last year in Galapagos, but because we could not secure any funds, we could only complete one workshop out of a four-part series. This year we are working on improving the curriculum we developed last year, so we can get funds. We don’t have any dates yet, but we think it’s going to be in the first trimester of the year. We are going to have these workshops throughout the year and hopefully, we will complete the entire series this year.

Jan 21

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Using the Local Dialect to Teach R Programming

By R Consortium Blog

Tell us about yourself

My name is Dattijo Murtala Makama, I am currently working as a Senior Software Engineer at the National Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR). I majored in Applied Mathematics and Machine Learning. I have been the Lead Organizer for Bauchi R User Group for the past 3 years. Furthermore, I have experience working with Machine Learning technology and also community organization.

What is the R community like in Nigeria?

The R community is still young and vibrant. In July 2018 when I started the R user group in Bauchi after I exchanged some emails with the then Director of R Consortium, Mr. Joseph Rickert, we had only 3 R user groups in Nigeria. But now we have over 10 user groups. More needs to be done to capture young developers and bring them to learn R programming, but we’re making progress.

How has COVID affected your ability to connect with members? In the past year, did you have to change your techniques to connect and collaborate with members? For example, did you use GitHub, video conferencing, online discussion groups more? Can these techniques be used to make your group more inclusive to people that are unable to attend physical events in the future?

The pandemic pretty much brought almost everyone to a halt. Our community was hit by the pandemic as well. We had to improvise via WhatsApp. Some community members who live in the same neighborhood do meet, program, and have mini-workshops. Generally, we still had to follow the trend of utilizing virtual platforms. We had tried different approaches in order to make our meetups possible despite the pandemic. We utilized exchanging scripts via WhatsApp as we have a very vibrant WhatsApp group for Bauchi RUG. We later changed to hybrid events as the social distancing measures were being relaxed.

What trends do you see in R language affecting your organization over the next year?

In the coming year, I see organizations and schools adapting to use R programming in many data analysis projects. We did a few outreaches this year and the attendance was impressive.

Also, using our local language to teach R is becoming more important. This year we had facilitators from Horizon IT Services who taught R programming in Hausa to our community members. Numerous researches have shown that the use of the first language in the second-language classroom helps students make connections with their existing knowledge of the mother tongue, thus facilitating the process of better understanding. This is the reason why we adopt the Hausa language as a medium of instruction in teaching R programming language to our members. In addition, we’re based in the Northern part of Nigeria, where many of its inhabitants struggle to understand English as compared to the Southern part of the country.

We believe this will empower our local community and increase interest. And we intend to continue next year. Moreover, we are following the footsteps of the LatinR community whose member, Yanina Bellini, teaches R programming in Spanish in order to facilitate a better understanding of R within the Americas. As a result of which, she recorded a significant increase in terms of participation at their meetups. And we have also recorded some impressive numbers as well.

Of the Funded Projects by the R Consortium, do you have a favorite project? Why is it your favorite?

Well, actually I have 2 favorite projects: Improving translation in R. This is because language serves as a barrier to getting many people to get started learning to program in R. Having documentation in other languages could help attract lots of people to programming in R.

Secondly Setting up an R-girls-schools network, we need to give more women the opportunity to learn data science because the statistics show that women are not well represented. By exposing young girls to R programming we can improve the participation of women in data science.

Of the Active Working Groups, which is your favorite? Why is it your favorite?

R/medicine is my favorite active working group. I have always wanted to apply mathematics to solve medical problems. During my undergrad, I got a freelancing job to analyze Vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) patients’ data.

When is your next event? Please give details!

The first event of the year is scheduled to hold on 29th January 2022. It’s titled “Getting Started with R programming.” It will serve as an introduction on why and how to get started programming in R. We’ll also use the opportunity to announce the registration for our next R for Data Science Study Jam. But we’ll be focusing on tutoring R programming in Hausa as well as collaborating with women in data science in order to attract as many women as we can.

Jan 12

Love0

Salt Lake City R User Group Looks to Meld In-person and Online Activities

By R Consortium Blog

Salt Lake City R User Group noticed that their users were missing something during their online meetings. R Consortium talks to Julia Silge about how they planned on mixing online meetings with in-person activities to help with networking. She also talks about how funded projects helped her directly in her work as well as how to increase worldwide acceptance with more translated documentation for the global audience.

RC: What is the R community like in Salt Lake City?

JS: Salt Lake City hits above its weight population-wise based on where it’s located regionally in the Mountain West, without other big cities with tech hubs nearby. The R community here is a mix of academic folks (from the University of Utah, the medical school, and other academic institutions) and the burgeoning tech scene. We have a thriving academic scene, and the medical school is well respected and is connected to a lot of life science research. This area in Utah is called ”Silicon Slopes,” due to the beautiful skiing and the corridor of tech companies from Salt Lake City down to Provo. The R Community reflects all this; we have life science researchers and people who work at technology companies that are based in this area.

RC: How has COVID affected your ability to connect with members?

JS: We had a meeting scheduled for March 2020, and we had to scramble to cancel it! Schools were moving online, and everyone was uncertain about what was happening. We took one month off since things were in flux. Then we moved to an online format later that spring, which we had never done before. We kept the same time slot (a weekday lunchtime Mountain Time) but shifted to online. We continued to use the same channels to get info about our meetings out. Thanks to the R Consortium, we have a meetup page. We also use GitHub to share talk materials after the fact, as well as a YouTube page for our videos. It was a big shift moving from in-person to online! Like a lot of R user groups, our meetings now had global reach.

RC: In the past year, did you have to change your techniques to connect and collaborate with members? For example, did you use GitHub, video conferencing, online discussion groups more? Can these techniques be used to make your group more inclusive to people that are unable to attend physical events in the future?

JS: The other organizers and I discussed our meeting plans in the summer when things were turning around here in our community, with low cases, hospitals under control, and the vaccine rollout. We decided to keep lunchtime virtual talks and add in in-person networking events between the virtual talks. The idea was to alternate every other month or so. Networking and social connections are something that we miss with only virtual meetings. That was the plan, but then the Delta variant arrived in our community and we scrapped it. That is still our long-term goal for the future, a mixture of online talks and in-person events for social connections.

RC: Can you tell us about one recent presentation or speaker that was especially interesting and what was the topic and why was it so interesting?

JS: One that comes to mind from this year was in May when we had a presentation on how to build a data science portfolio. Dr. Rachael Tatman gave a talk about how to make the transition from an academic or analyst role into data science with a portfolio of work. This talk is an example of a career or community talk, thinking about processes or decisions independent of the specific language we use.

The other category of talks we do are more specifically about using R, like using a certain package or how to write better R code. We ended 2021 with a talk about the pins package, an R package for publishing and sharing datasets, models, and other objects. It lets you collaborate with coworkers more fluently. Katie Masiello gave this talk, and it’s an example of a talk about a common problem and how we solve it with a tool in R.

RC: What trends do you see in R language affecting your organization over the next year?

JS: One thing that I see more and more people need to address in their workflows is moving from local development environments to a cloud environment. Our talk in October was about how to get started in AWS for machine learning and use SageMaker. (Since the October talk, there have been changes in how to use R on SageMaker.) Emily Robinson gave that talk and she used her own experience in her job to share what she learned. Using cloud resources is something that is a real trend, affecting more and more R users. There is a lot of interest in these topics, and we will continue to see talks reflect that.

RC: Do you know of any data journalism efforts by your members? If not, are there particular data journalism projects that you’ve seen in the last year that you feel had a positive impact on society?

JS: Salt Lake City isn’t a huge data journalism hub, but one project that comes to mind is the work of data journalist Peter Aldhous at BuzzFeed looking at the pattern of election results and how they were affected by COVID. This project basically asked the question, “During the election, did the mishandling of COVID affect Trump’s chances?” It turns out it didn’t, and neither did unemployment. This was a difficult dataset because the first outbreaks were in New York City and other very blue cities, and then the worst of the pandemic moved to red states. The analysis shows that places that were hard hit by COVID were no more or less likely to vote for Trump. Peter used R for his analysis, and you can go and see his script on GitHub for how he did his modeling.

RC: When is your next event? Please give details!

JS: Our first event of 2022 is lightning talks done by our community members. This is a tradition for us; our first meeting of the year is always lightning talks, a nice variety of things from different people. Our members will give talks either showing off successes or failures, at a lot of different levels, and about both process as well as statistical methods. The variety is always nice.

RC: Of the Funded Projects by the R Consortium, do you have a favorite project? Why is it your favorite?

JS: One that personally impacted me is the HTTP testing in R book. I work on some packages that make HTTP calls like the qualtRics package (to access Qualtrics surveys) and, honestly, the testing was a mess before I used this book. It made a huge difference in how my collaborators and I were able to build more reliable, better tested open source software for people to use. This testing book was my personal favorite funded project because it helped me move from being less effective to having a better grasp of good practices in this context.

RC: Of the Active Working Groups, which is your favorite? Why is it your favorite?

JS: I’m going to highlight two. The first is distributed computing. I work on tooling for machine learning and modeling, and that work makes me very interested in better patterns for distributed computing structures for R. The other one is the R Pharma group. I gave a keynote at R Pharma in 2020, and although this is a community that I had not had much interaction with until then, I found that they are working on such interesting problems! They are interested in scaling up maturity in terms of software engineering and modeling practices.

RC: There are four projects that are R Consortium Top-Level Projects. If you could add another project to this list for guaranteed funding for 3 years and a voting seat on the ISC, which project would you add?

The current four projects are:

JS: One that I think that would be, priority-wise, important and valuable would be the issue of translations in R. (That’s one of the funded groups this year.) When I look at the top-level projects, they focus on these top-level ways that we look at the R community and how we support people. How do we grow a thriving open source community better? High-level English competency being required to be able to access help messages, documentation, and more is rough. R is not unique in this challenge, but one of the things that drives the adoption of R is that you can use it to solve your everyday data analysis problems, no matter where you are. English isn’t the majority language in the world or even on the internet, so I think it is worthwhile to improve the translation situation, with better non-English support in general, and more documentation and blogs in multiple languages.

How do I Join?

R Consortium’s R User Group and Small Conference Support Program (RUGS) provides grants to help R groups around the world organize, share information and support each other. We have given grants over the past 4 years, encompassing over 65,000 members in 35 countries. We would like to include you! Cash grants and meetup.com accounts are awarded based on the intended use of the funds and the amount of money available to distribute

Dec 30

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COVID Is Accelerating the Growth and Reach of the R-Ladies Johannesburg Community

By R Consortium Blog

The R consortium recently checked in with Vebashini Naidoo, one of the organizers of the R-Ladies Johannesburg. The group started in July 2018 and has so far had 19 physical meetings and 16 online meetings. Their shift to online has allowed the group to become a global community, with the leadership team from the Gauteng province in South Africa. Vebashini shared how they have leveraged the COVID pandemic to expand their reach beyond South Africa.

What is the R community like in your country?

Our community is very diverse. We are people from different ethnic, gender and academic backgrounds. We have people from academia, and different industries such as banking, telecommunications, journalism, law and epidemiology.

Members of the community are so enthusiastic and appreciative of the speakers. I think Africans, in particular, are thirsty for knowledge because we know that’s the way to elevate African people. Our members are very engaged in the talks.

Before COVID 19 hit we expanded R-Ladies Johannesburg because my co-organizer is from Pretoria. This has made R-Ladies Johannesburg to grow and become R-Ladies Gauteng. However, rebranding ourselves to R-Ladies Gauteng is quite a long mission since people know us on Twitter and Meetup as R-Ladies Johannesburg, but our current perimeter goes beyond the city of Johannesburg.

How has COVID affected your ability to connect with members?

As with any human being, even if you are an introvert, you still need to see people every once in a while. But, with COVID and the vaccination rates in South Africa being quite low—only about 38% of the adult population is fully vaccinated at the moment, our meetings have migrated and stayed online. When we were meeting physically, we used to eat pizza together and interact. I guess that’s the one thing we dearly miss.

However, COVID has been like a blessing in disguise for our community. Now our community has gone international, which is a good opportunity to bring speakers from across the world to our local audience. Previously, that wasn’t possible.

Before COVID, it was so hard to get speakers locally. We tried contacting universities and inviting those doing interesting work in South Africa to come speak for us, but with the meetings being physical, we were limited by the number of people to invite. With us being online, we now have a wide range of speakers to invite.

We have used Zoom for video conferences. We were lucky because R-Ladies set up a Zoom account for the R-Ladies user groups. They did that nearly immediately when COVID hit. It is very convenient for us, because whenever we want to have a meetup, we access a calendar and book a session if the slot is available. We are probably going to remain online even after the pandemic is under control for the reason that online meetings have expanded our reach and given an opportunity to those that could not attend our in-person meetings.

Having online meetings has also enabled us to record our meetings and upload them on the R-Ladies global YouTube channel. The nice thing about this is people can watch our sessions at a time convenient for them. That’s another blessing the pandemic has bestowed upon us.

We’ve always used and continue to use GitHub. Whenever a speaker gives us materials, we upload them on GitHub. Regarding online discussion groups, we haven’t had any so far.

Can you tell us about one recent presentation or speaker that was especially interesting and what was the topic and why was it so interesting?

We had Diana Pholo, she did a presentation on incorporating Auth0 to implement authentication for Shiny. Like where you would have different people have different user profiles, and the contents they access would also be different. She did an entire setup (with authentication) using Auth0 to allow people to log on and access different materials from each other. People without login credentials wouldn’t be able to have access to the Shiny app at all. That was quite interesting.

What trends do you see in R language affecting your organization over the next year?

One thing is with tidymodels ecosystem growing as it is, as well as the package enhancements in that ecosystem, I think that will give the world more opportunity to use R more widely. The other is the addition of R to the AWS cloud environment. I believe that is another step to wider adoption of R in businesses.

In South Africa, most businesses are more into SAS/Matlab. They are not embracing R, and when there is adoption of open source, they are more inclined towards Python. I think having R in AWS cloud is a step in the right direction to getting more adoption of the language across companies and academia. Most people I talk to love R, they love the ease of use of the language.

We have a member (she hasn’t come to many meetups but we’d still like to think of her as part of the community) that works for a local online data journalism magazine called Outlier. They do an amazing job when it comes to data journalism here in South Africa.

Of the Funded Projects by the R Consortium, do you have a favorite project? Why is it your favorite?

I like the Setting up an R-Girls Schools Network. The reason it is my favorite is that there is a lot of underrepresentation of women in technical fields such as data science, and I want to see more equality in the tech fields in the future. Projects like that go a long way to meeting that goal. If that project becomes successful in the UK, I believe the materials can be distributed and copied as a recipe to the rest of the world.

Africa in particular, is in desperate need of such projects, not just for women or girls but for African children. The project’s focus is on girl children, but for us as Africans it can be a recipe to follow for our African schools.

Of the Active Working Groups, which is your favorite? Why is it your favorite?

The R community Diversity and Inclusion is my favorite, though I am not sure if it is still active. The R consortium is very supportive of R groups that are trying to bring diversity and inclusion, such as the R-Ladies groups, AfricaR etc. This project is similar to why I chose the R-Girls schools one because it focuses on equality.

When is your next event? Please give details!

In 2019, I did an R package tutorial for our group, and my co-organizer asked me if I can do an online one for some of her colleagues working in the university. That will be one of the presentations that’s coming up in the first half of next year.

We are in talks with a couple of people at the moment. There is one lady who uses R for artistry and another one who uses the gm package to make music in R. (Editor’s note: The package name “gm” means “grammar of music” or “generate music.”). She will probably speak to us early next year.

Dec 29

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R User Group Kano, Nigeria, is Bringing in the Next Generation of Students to the R Community

By R Consortium Blog

The R Consortium recently reached out to Umar Isah Adam to find out more about the status of the R User Group Kano. Umar is a freelance data analyst who works as a part-time typist, data analyst, and volunteer mathematics teacher at a local school. Umar loves to write programs and enjoys contributing to society. He graduated from the Federal University of Dutse in 2017 and holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. He is an organizer of the Google Developers Group (GDG) Dutse. After his graduation, he picked up an interest in data science and went for a series of courses including a nano degree online from Udacity, and R and Python programming from Coursera.

When he’s not programming or leading the R User Group Kano, Umar loves to play video games and watch movies.

What is the R community like in Nigeria?

In my opinion, the R community is doing well in Nigeria, but it can be better. We should work to make the whole R community connected and in touch with one another. We should be tracking progress and sharing experiences. Live events should be organized across the country, maybe once or twice a year. This would help to strengthen the R community, and it will help a lot in reaching out to others. It will also help the new chapters grow and acquire more audience. Furthermore, the younger generation needs to be engaged in the communities in order to help grow the community in the future.

COVID drastically affected our ability to connect with members because most of the time the people we are trying to reach are new to programming or to the R language, so meeting them in person has a significant effect on their interest and confidence. Most of the time we are meeting online we experience a lot of internet connection problems, this gives us a lot of headaches in achieving what we want to achieve. We have tried using different techniques to connect, but it is not working out well. It’s not all negative. Video conferencing and other technologies can be used in the future to make the group more inclusive to those who cannot attend.

What trends do you see in R language affecting your organization over the next year?

Young adults are leaving secondary and tertiary schools, and with the rate of unemployment, the tech ecosystem is enlarging and areas like Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, etc. are gaining visibility. These young people have to learn R and Python.

I see a lot of people wanting to learn R. In fact, I don’t think we will be able to accommodate the massive crowd of new R learners in the coming year. There are no proper certification courses for these people, and the issues of access to the internet and computers poses a threat to this growth.

Of the Funded Projects by the R Consortium, do you have a favorite project? Why is it your favorite?

Interactive visualisations in R vial R-to-JavaScript-Transpilation. This is my favorite project because it will open a whole lot of chapters in the R community that will grow through this project.

Of the Active Working Groups, which is your favorite? Why is it your favorite?

R-Medicine is my favorite, because it will bring a real change in the medical field, it will save lives, and help grow a healthy world. I’ll be glad to have an opportunity to be with the team.

When is your next event? Please give details!

The time of our next event is not fixed yet. However, we are currently collaborating with Global AI hub to reach out to Secondary schools, and the program is expected to be continuous. Secondary students from selected schools will be given the opportunity to engage in a code lab with hands-on experience.

I realized most of the R community members are not as young as I thought, and for the future of the community, younger generations will have to be engaged and trained for them to be able to help the R community and brainstorm some exemplary solutions for the community. Given the current situation, schools will be chosen based on the availability of computers and interest of the students to be introduced to programming. All interested students can join regardless of their classes. This opportunity will be used to introduce R to the students, showcase its power and highlight some interesting projects that are done in R to capture their attention.

Dec 27

Love0

How the Lagos R User Group Has Leveraged the Pandemic

By R Consortium Blog

Folajimi Aroloye is a data analytics professional and educator. He is the organizer for the Lagos R User Group. He is involved in capacity building. Folajimi started his data science journey in December 2017, using R at Wema Bank in Nigeria. According to him, it has been both challenging and exciting fitting into different roles and wearing different hats in the organization.

What is the R community like in Nigeria?

The community in Nigeria has grown over time, and it is exciting to see how many people use R. The user groups and occasional meetups have encourage people to come out of their shells. Although it may seem that there are no R users, our meetups are usually packed. The recently concluded useR conference had many Africans registering as attendees and most of them were Nigerians.

The Lagos RUG started in March 2019. Interest is not limited to R user groups; several data science communities also use R. While some use Python, others use both R and Python programming languages.

I can firmly say that the R language is gaining more ground in Africa, especially Nigeria. Several financial institutions, tertiary schools, and organizations use R to carry out research and execute their day-to-day activities. It is an interesting space to be a part of, more effort just needs to be made to create awareness and drive the adoption for the use of R.

In a way, I don’t think we were affected by COVID. WhatsApp has been the major platform for communication, but we were already leveraging these types of platforms prior to this time. We have a Slack group, but communication wasn’t seamless as some people found it hard to keep up with messages on the platform. We employed the use of WhatsApp for community engagement and collaborated more on Github.

What COVID did for us was to help us save funds. For all our meetups, we made refreshments available and also had to pay for spaces we used for these meetups, so COVID helped us save money as we moved to a more virtual space. The money was converted and used to pay for much larger access on Zoom to accommodate more persons.

Can you tell us about one recent presentation or speaker that was especially interesting and what was the topic and why was it so interesting?

At an event last year, we had an interesting session on “Machine learning with R.” It was an eye-opener. From the analysis we took of the attendees, we had more beginners in the community, and it was interesting to new R users as well as Machine Learning enthusiasts. It was facilitated by Oluseyi Obaloluwa Ajayi, one of the members of the community. We spent most of the year 2019 building the right competence in data analytics and entering into the year 2020, we saw the need to progress in the data science learning path.

The model we run in Lagos is an open and safe space; this means any member can speak. Our system is designed to expose new talents to the community and other larger companies. The only session I facilitated was the orientation in 2019. Members of the user groups are allowed to speak about their growth, challenges, and what they are currently learning. We have an executive body that organizes these meetups and reaches out to speakers.

We are not biased in the sense that we have created opportunities for everybody to speak despite their levels of programming knowledge. From beginners to professionals our user group allows members to have the stage. We are building the Lagos R users group to be the template for other user groups in Nigeria and across Africa.

What trends do you see in R language affecting your organization over the next year?

I see a lot of people coming into Data Science as Africa is the hotspot for new tech talent. Also, a lot of people are using Python for data science, but other sectors like financial institutions and research institutes use R which means data scientists and data analysts would need to use R more for their analysis. So, a new trend would be a blend of the use of R and Python for data science across Africa.

Do you know of any data journalism efforts by your members? If not, are there particular data journalism projects that you’ve seen in the last year that you feel had a positive impact on society?

I am not aware of any on a personal level, but some organizations use R in Data Journalism. Notable mentions include Stears Business, Nairametrics, and many more. These organizations have a knack for using data to help create public awareness and education on key matters that affects society.

Of the Funded Projects by the R Consortium, do you have a favorite project? Why is it your favorite?

SatRdays and Software Carpentry R Instructor Training; additional support for trainers and facilitators. With SatRdays, there has been a rich source of resources for newbies and the R community.

Of the Active Working Groups, which is your favorite? Why is it your favorite?

Code Coverage: supporting the ecosystem and making available the best and updated tools to use is high for me on my choice of the Active Working Groups I see as a favorite. Having a tool that supports the breadth of the R language across multiple platforms, and that is used by R package developers and R core teams, helps to improve software quality for the R Community.

When is your next event? Please give details!

Presently, I can’t go into details but we will have a virtual 1-day session to evaluate the past year and plan for the future.

Dec 22

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R-Ladies Lagos on Data Visualization and Hybrid Events

By R Consortium Blog

Alimi Eyitayo is a Graduate of Computer Engineering and a social engineering professional with over 12 years of experience in the field of information technology. She is an international speaker and an education advocate. Her quest for knowledge motivated her to embark on virtual reality research which was published as the first virtual reality research work in Africa which she demystifies in TEDx talks and other presentations. She’s a Software Engineer that chooses to build people – especially women in technology – over building products. She’s a Cloud Solutions Architect at IBM, and you can connect with her on LinkedIn.

What is the R community like in Nigeria?

The R community in Nigeria is growing steadily. The R-Ladies Lagos user group was founded in September 2019. Sponsorship support is a challenge as well as R language acceptability. There are larger data communities already in existence, and we have to help most people understand why they should use R.

In the past, we have arranged for virtual connections and events but that also has been challenging. Some of our community members have the challenge of staying focused at home because of the house chores while others need access to the Internet to remain consistent over time. When COVID happened it presented us with even greater challenges – economic change, local and global lockdown, and some other incidents created a very tough situation for physical – and often time – virtual connectivity. There are also some internal challenges with a diversity – women-focused – group like ours. Owing to this feedback, a hybrid-seasonal event will give optimum support.

Can you tell us about one recent presentation or speaker that was especially interesting and what was the topic and why was it so interesting?

We had the Data Science Nigeria team come to one of our events at a university campus to speak on “Getting started with data science.” This event was interesting because we had the opportunity to access the student community, and it came as an opportunity to get newbies started with Data Science using the R language

What trends do you see in R language affecting your organization over the next year?

I see more women tending towards data visualization and statistical implementation. As a technology community, more effort, support, and training from the community will sprout more interest. Women are interested in emerging technologies but adequate training and support will move them from interest to implementation.

None that I am aware of but as a member of the WHO infodemic exercises, that is one impact project I have been a part of as it helps people – software engineers and journalists – come together to work on projects and technologies that help flag misinformation while also providing professional journalistic views and reporting.

Of the Active Working Groups, which is your favorite? Why is it your favorite?

The R Community Diversity and Inclusion. I’ve been directly involved in 3 user conferences and twice served on the community diversity and inclusion team. This is my favorite because It directly touches the humans working on the technology. Although this community diversity and inclusion working group in the R foundation has a lot of improvement to do, the fact that it touches the lives of people is something I’m really happy about.

When is your next event? Please give details!

We currently do not have an event scheduled. The community is currently on break and our next event will be scheduled for the first quarter of 2022.

Dec 21

Love0

New Data Science Degree in Zimbabwe Universities Fueling Interest and Growth in R Programming

By R Consortium Blog

R consortium had a discussion with Asimbongeni Dhlodhlo, one of the key leaders spearheading the ZimR UseRs group in Zimbabwe. He talks on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected them as a community and how they are dealing with the current global crisis. Being a community dominated by students, R is gaining popularity in the country especially after the introduction of a degree in data science by some universities. Asimbongeni also has an interesting take on seeing R running on serverless environments.

What is the R community like in your country?

The R community in Zimbabwe is young, driven by demand for workers with programming skills. Our members are people who have a background in computer programming. Recently, there has been an introduction of data science degrees in three universities in the country. Five years ago, we did not have data science as a degree in Zimbabwe. R is being used in these universities as part of their core curriculum which has brought an increase in R members in the group.

Also, Zimbabwe is facing a serious unemployment problem, but NGOs are growing. These NGOs normally come with their own standards such as the kind of software to be used, which has caused an upward trend in the use of R. R is being used by NGOs for data cleaning, analysis and visualization. The largest group making up the R community in Zimbabwe are students from universities, not people in business.

How has COVID affected your ability to connect with members?

It has been a horrible time for us. Here in Zimbabwe we had an early lockdown, even when the numbers for COVID cases were quite low. This really affected us from meeting physically. The numbers are low even now but our borders still remain closed.

We haven’t had a lot of events on just R. What we have done is to partner with the data science community which is bigger than ours, including a Python one that is popular. Whenever there is a Python Zimbabwe or data science event, we are always part of it, but that was like 2-3 years ago. We have tried using virtual meetings however, internet connectivity has been an issue of major concern. Most of our users being students, we cannot do a long meeting because the majority may not afford the internet costs. We have been using WhatsApp as a discussion board where people ask questions, help with challenges. But it’s been a horrible time.

We have been using virtual meetings, but did not get good numbers and the numbers drop quickly during virtual meetings. The maximum we can do is 2 hours, beyond that the numbers start falling.

The main platform we are using right now is WhatsApp, but then it has limits on the number of people. We have never used GitHub. WhatsApp is the only tool we are using to connect, but I doubt that we can continue using it moving forward. People get excited when there is a physical conference; they want to meet, interact, and travel to different locations. They really enjoy that. Unfortunately, we cannot replicate that virtually.

For us, the ideal thing is to meet physically. I’m just hoping this whole COVID crisis goes away.

Can you tell us about one recent presentation or speaker that was especially interesting and what was the topic and why was it so interesting?

We had Kundai Gwatidzo who did an analysis on tracking the number of burials during COVID. He used Sentinel satellite imagery to track graves. On the satellite image there is a shadow that shows when there is a grave that has been dug. He went ahead to analyze that and then used a classification algorithm that tracks the shadows and produces a count for a specific cemetery in the past week. Using this, we were able to have a weekly count of graves, if there are no clouds. This particular presentation was a “wow” moment for us as a community.

What trends do you see in R language affecting your organization over the next year?

People have always enjoyed R since it is easier to learn than other languages. The learning curve allows people to jump on fast. What’s more interesting for me in the future is to see R being used in serverless environments like Docker plus other serveless platforms. There has been a lot of work that has been done to make R easier using packages, such as Machine Learning packages and R MarkDown.

R has always been strong in visualization, ggplots is one of the best packages out there. It makes creating graphs a beautiful thing to do.

When is your next event? Please give details!

The plan was to have an event in February. We are hoping that it will be a physical event because here the policy is that if you are vaccinated you are allowed to meet physically. However, with the Omicron variant, it’s unclear. We are keeping our fingers crossed.

Of the Funded Projects by the R Consortium, do you have a favorite project? Why is it your favorite?

For me the one that stands out is the Google Earth Engine (GEE) with R project since it is trying to link R to the Google Earth Engine. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is data intensive and it requires a lot of computation power. If that comes together by leveraging Google’s computation power, it would be an exciting project to watch.

Dec 17

Love0

Calgary R User Group on the Importance of Math Education

By R Consortium Blog

Jonathan Lin of the Calgary R User group (meetup | website) talks to R Consortium about their adaptation into the COVID world and their struggles with the higher production value of videos. He also talks about the importance of making statistics and math more approachable to kids to get them more interested in data science in general.

RC: What is the R community like in Calgary?

JL: Speaking of the R community, it’s pretty diverse in Calgary. The main organizers are academic, and I joined primarily with a business background. A large portion of our audience comes from academia and statistical backgrounds, so our discussions are oriented towards studies and dissertations. We also get businesses and petrochemical engineering talks, too, being an Oil & Gas centric hub. The combination makes for a very diverse and interesting set of discussions.

RC: How has COVID affected your ability to connect with members?

JL: Up until this year, we hosted exclusively in-person meetings. While we would post slides after for people to use, we were limited by time needed to properly record our meetings. COVID has forced us to be more accessible. Having online meetings has increased our reach. We were able to advertise to a much wider audience, and also get a bigger range of both speakers outside of Calgary and even Canada. For instance, Edmonton is 3 hours away, and we were able to get a speaker that we wouldn’t have been able to consider before.

There are some downsides, however. On Zoom, we have less banter and conversation. Our Zoom meetings follow a fairly basic format – the presenter presents, our members ask a few questions, and then participants leave. We also find its harder to organically identify speaking opportunities – Chel Hee Lee (co-organizer) has done an amazing job finding speakers during this time, and we are always looking for contributors.

We wanted to experiment with other platforms to try and break out from this pattern. We tried wonder, the online conferencing app. It showed a lot of promise, and the interaction was good. Zoom has significant momentum, so asking our users to try something new is a culture shift. The general shyness of online users (especially face to face) is a challenge – online, there is little incentive and lots of risk for individuals to engage with strangers.

There is no substitute for in-person communication… but after doing several meetings online, there is a lot we can learn and integrate back into our in-person meetings.

JL: We used GitHub since day 1. This is a great way to show a presence both online and locally. It allows people to see prior meetings presentations, code, and other materials. This gave us a relatively easy transition for distributing materials when we started hosted online.

Recording videos is new to us, however. The need for reuse means we need to focus on higher production values, including additional post-event updates.

The technical issues that come with it are worth the effort though. Having greater access to individuals with disabilities, or even those balancing family life, is the obvious benefit that comes from these changes. It enables access on our YouTube channel, allowing more people to access our content, regardless of their status.

Ideally we’d continue recording videos, and would love ideas on how to easily put event videos onto Youtube.

RC: Can you tell us about one recent presentation or speaker that was especially interesting and what was the topic and why was it so interesting?

JL: When we have presenters who have done academic work, they come in with a very novel aspect to problem-solving. Abed Ayyad gave a talk about how Alberta has the best solar exposure in Canada. And he didn’t just tell us, but he showed us along with the calculations. Another was by Danielle Clarke on bee habitats and bioversity can be affected by the shape of the habitat, and modelled with GIS and Landscape Analysis. She turned everything into a grid, how diversity was in each grid, and how a change in one area affects other areas. This application of R techniques to academic topics is something that tangibly demonstrates how to apply R to specific problems. I love seeing the cross-pollination of R (pun intended).

RC: What trends do you see in R language affecting your organization over the next year?

JL: We’re getting a steady stream of new R users coming into our organization, who want to learn how to use R. We are thinking of doing workshops and helping the community. It is one thing to host these user groups, but actively teaching and learning would be a highly effective way to improve our community.

JL: I was watching Twitter and we had a recent municipal election where one of the people running was investigated after initial voting had taken place. One analysis used R to review how his votes changed from pre-voting to the day of elections. None of them were in our CalgaryR User Group, but it’s awesome to see other Calgarians using R for their work.

RC: When is your next event? Please give details!

JL: Our next event (at time of interview) is with Cherri Zhang from the University of Calgary on the Validation of the underlying constructs of survey instruments, relating to the diagnosis and management of concussions.

And anyone can join our CalgaryR Meetup group to hear about our 2022 and future events!

RC: Of the Funded Projects by the R Consortium, do you have a favorite project? Why is it your favorite?

JL: They’re all great, and the following are especially of relevant to us:

Setting up an R-Girls-School Network is where we really want to get kids involved with coding earlier.
The Java interactive visualization looks neat. I’m excited about that one. R is blessed with lots of visualization packages, and there are always advantages with one package over another, so I look forward to seeing what this one brings.

RC: Of the Active Working Groups, which is your favorite? Why is it your favorite?

JL: Distributive Computing and R Certification both are interesting to me.

Regarding the R Certification – How would you go around getting a common certification in R? Being previously “certified” in a different programming language, I found that certifications do not always indicate a strong competency in the language.

I feel like Distributive Computing could use some development in the R system due to some of the issues going on currently with data size.

RC: Four projects are R Consortium Top-Level Projects. If you could add another project to this list for guaranteed funding for 3 years and a voting seat on the ISC, which project would you add?

For reference, the four current projects are: R Community Diversity and Inclusion, R-Hub, R-Ladies, and R User Group Support Program (RUGS).

JL: Similar to my earlier answer on supporting “R Girls,” one of my co-organizers (Cliff) is strongly passionate about “R kids,” supporting statistics and math fluency for kids. It would help to make coding and statistics more approachable and embedded in the minds before they reach high school. Visualizations, graphs, interactivity and discovery would all help make R more accessible to kids.