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My portions of the R workshop are over. A relief. I wound up assembling all the web files for the course over on my website because of some of the ridiculousness involved in trying to get someone else to set things up on the site for the university program. Anyway, there they are, in case they're useful to any of you for some reason (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scrottie, for instance). Given the philosophy underlying the workshop, I'd best be sharing things with you.
The hard part is, now I'm an "expert." I'm hoping that people will start to figure out how to help out each other, particularly after we set up a local R User Group.
We know it was a long week because of major kitchen failures this morning. S tried to brew coffee without all the pieces assembled correctly in the Moka pot (missing the gasket and screen), and then I had to just leave the kitchen entirely for a little while so he could obtain caffeine and not have a total meltdown in the process. Got the plants watered to the point where they wouldn't die in the mid-day heat, and scrambled to get breakfast and in to campus for the day.
I think I'm reasonably satisfied with the approaches I used for the material I covered. Yesterday's material went more smoothly than today's, largely because we were all fresh at the beginning of the day yesterday. But also because I had a lot of excellent starting materials for yesterday's topics, whereas for today I had to work harder to put things together. I basically had to introduce everyone to three different graphics packages to the point where they could see enough to decide which package would best suit their needs - all in an hour and a half. Not easy to do when everyone's brain is a bit fried and things have been running late because of previous enthusiastic instructors.
The first instructor today was excellent, so it was fine that he took extra time. After all, he got everyone to collectively write a Rule 30 cellular automaton, a great confidence-builder for people learning about programming for the first time, after walking everyone through basic logic structures. You have to understand that most biologists are completely at home with sticking their hands into small burrows and extracting and identifying the occupants. They're patient enough to work their way through logic, but they require an introduction and guidelines to get started. Amazingly, I've never been to a workshop before where everyone has managed to get everything downloaded and installed successfully. A benefit of teaching seasoned graduate students, postdocs and faculty, I suppose.
I'm left wondering what this all does for me. On the one hand, I've amassed some valuable expertise - it's clear that there's a dire need for people who can toggle back and forth between speaking English coherently and programming (scripting, mostly). On the flipside, are there ways to value this skillset in academic contexts - as in, will it actually help get me a job somewhere? Hard to say - in that respect, I've been an absolute bargain so far.
scrottie, for instance). Given the philosophy underlying the workshop, I'd best be sharing things with you.The hard part is, now I'm an "expert." I'm hoping that people will start to figure out how to help out each other, particularly after we set up a local R User Group.
We know it was a long week because of major kitchen failures this morning. S tried to brew coffee without all the pieces assembled correctly in the Moka pot (missing the gasket and screen), and then I had to just leave the kitchen entirely for a little while so he could obtain caffeine and not have a total meltdown in the process. Got the plants watered to the point where they wouldn't die in the mid-day heat, and scrambled to get breakfast and in to campus for the day.
I think I'm reasonably satisfied with the approaches I used for the material I covered. Yesterday's material went more smoothly than today's, largely because we were all fresh at the beginning of the day yesterday. But also because I had a lot of excellent starting materials for yesterday's topics, whereas for today I had to work harder to put things together. I basically had to introduce everyone to three different graphics packages to the point where they could see enough to decide which package would best suit their needs - all in an hour and a half. Not easy to do when everyone's brain is a bit fried and things have been running late because of previous enthusiastic instructors.
The first instructor today was excellent, so it was fine that he took extra time. After all, he got everyone to collectively write a Rule 30 cellular automaton, a great confidence-builder for people learning about programming for the first time, after walking everyone through basic logic structures. You have to understand that most biologists are completely at home with sticking their hands into small burrows and extracting and identifying the occupants. They're patient enough to work their way through logic, but they require an introduction and guidelines to get started. Amazingly, I've never been to a workshop before where everyone has managed to get everything downloaded and installed successfully. A benefit of teaching seasoned graduate students, postdocs and faculty, I suppose.
I'm left wondering what this all does for me. On the one hand, I've amassed some valuable expertise - it's clear that there's a dire need for people who can toggle back and forth between speaking English coherently and programming (scripting, mostly). On the flipside, are there ways to value this skillset in academic contexts - as in, will it actually help get me a job somewhere? Hard to say - in that respect, I've been an absolute bargain so far.
