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R development master class: NYC, Dec 12-13

11 messages · Hadley Wickham, Alex Ruiz Euler, Steve Lianoglou +6 more

Hadley Wickham
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Hi all,

I hope you don't mind the slightly off topic email, but I'm going to
be teaching an R development master class in New York City on Dec
12-13. The basic idea of the class is to help you write better code,
focused on the mantra of "do not repeat yourself". In day one you will
learn powerful new tools of abstraction, allowing you to solve a wider
range of problems with fewer lines of code. Day two will teach you how
to make packages, the fundamental unit of code distribution in R,
allowing others to save time by allowing them to use your code.

To get the most out of this course, you should have some experience
programming in R already: you should be familiar with writing
functions, and the basic data structures of R: vectors, matrices,
arrays, lists and data frames. You will find the course particularly
useful if you're an experienced R user looking to take the next step,
or if you're moving to R from other programming languages and you want
to quickly get up to speed with R's unique features. A couple session
outline is available at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2492641558

Both days will incorporate a mix of lectures and hands-on learning.
Expect to learn about a topic and then immediately put it into
practice with a small example. Plenty of help will be available if you
get stuck. You'll receive a printed copy of all slides, as well as
electronic access to the slides, code and data. The material covered
in the course is currently being turned into a book. You can access
the current draft at https://github.com/hadley/devtools/wiki/.

Limited discounts for students (66% off) and academics (33% off) are
available - please contact me for details.

Find out more and sign up at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2492641558

Regards,

Hadley
Alex Ruiz Euler
# 
What, no discount codes for us?!

No seriously, as much as I'm for free enterprise, it feels awkward to
see you promote an (expensive!) course in a list where people offer not
only their knowledge, but also the tools you use, for free.

I ignore whether this goes against posting rules, but even if it doesn't
I wouldn't want this awesome resource to become a marketing platform.


On Sun, 13 Nov 2011 11:34:35 -0600
Hadley Wickham <hadley at rice.edu> wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Hadley Wickham
    

    

      
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You might have a point if I taught this course instead of offering
knowledge and code for free, but I do it as well.  Over the years I
have contributed thousands of answers on R-help and hundreds on
stackoverflow. I've written dozens of open-source packages and look
after several R related mailing lists. I make pre-prints of all my
papers available for free, I release all my lecture notes under
creative commons licenses and I'm a supporting benefactor of the R
foundation (or at least I've submitted the paperwork, I'm not yet
listed on the site). What more do you want?!

Some of the money I earn from these courses goes to pay for my summer
salary and supports student research. It also gives me confidence that
if I don't get tenure because I've been writing R packages instead of
papers, I can keep doing the work I love.

Hadley

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Alex Ruiz Euler
    

    

      
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Ha! Point publicly acknowledged.

Best,
A.


On Sun, 13 Nov 2011 13:41:36 -0600

        
Hadley Wickham <hadley at rice.edu> wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Steve Lianoglou
    

    

      
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Though I can't speak for Alex, I suspect this was a case of him either
(1) not realizing you were actually the poster of the original email,
or (2) he is relatively new to the woRld and hasn't yet connecting
your name to your (enumerable) contributions.

Also:

            

      
      
      
    

        
If that actually happens, that would be an amazing/colossal (not in a
good way) testament to how well the "rating system" works in academia.

-steve

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Sarah Goslee
    

    

      
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On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Steve Lianoglou

        
<mailinglist.honeypot at gmail.com> wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
I'm not in academia, but government research. I do go through a review
very similar to the tenure process. Last time, I was told that I couldn't list
my R package and associated papers as a research activity with substantial
impact because it was outside my official scope of work. (Even though I
wrote it so I could *do* my work.) I have no trouble seeing academic
administrators do the same thing.

Sarah

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Joshua Wiley
    

    

      
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On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Steve Lianoglou

        
<mailinglist.honeypot at gmail.com> wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
I think there's a broader issue here, that many people (Hadley
included, but many many others) who do open source work go seriously
underappreciated and underrespected.  This is not just in academia.
You do not have to read too many emails on R-help or R-devel to see
someone complaining about something that is not working or is not
working the way it "should".  Suggestions for improvement are always
great, but it seems to me the tone is often very negative considering
the amount of time and effort very gifted people put into it and have
gotten A) little or no payment B) little recognition from their
respective institutions.  Makes me wish I was more than a graduate
student and had more to give.

Josh

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Spencer Graves
    

    

      
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On 11/13/2011 12:58 PM, Sarah Goslee wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
What can be done to fight that?


       Do you publish papers in refereed academic journals, like in 
academia?


       The ultimate evaluation of the value of publications is the 
number of citations to the work.  You should be able to go to Science 
Citation Index and get reports of the citations to papers you and your 
peers have written.  With R, I know of two ways to access references. 
The simplest is to use the sos package, and then "findFn" for your name.


       Example:

            

      
      
      
    

        
found 517 matches;  retrieving 26 pages
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

            

      
      
      
    

        
Call:
findFn(string = "{hadley wickham}", maxPages = 999)

Total number of matches: 517
Downloaded 506 links in 24 packages.

Packages with at least 3 matches using pattern
   '{hadley%20wickham}'
            Package Count MaxScore TotalScore       Date
1          ggplot2   255        1        255 2011-11-04
2           rggobi    88        1         88 2011-04-20
3          reshape    54        1         54 2011-10-07
4  DescribeDisplay    23        3         25 2010-03-24
5            helpr    20        1         20 2010-11-05
6             plyr    20        1         20 2011-11-04
7         tourrGui    10        1         10 2011-02-05
8           lvplot     6        1          6 2010-03-24
9           GGally     4        2          5 2011-11-04
10      Rd2roxygen     4        1          4 2011-09-15
11    latticeExtra     3        2          4 2011-11-04
12           hints     3        1          3 2010-03-24
13           tourr     3        1          3 2011-09-15


       The first few rows are Hadley's packages.  The later ones are 
other packages that cite him.


       Secondly, the information on CRAN for each of Hadley's packages 
lists "reverse dependencies".


       When I look at Science Citation Index for all the papers I've 
published, I've been disappointed.  When I look at what I've done with 
R, it seems that more people have gotten more value from that work than 
from the papers I've written.  One of the reasons is that papers and 
books with companion software is much easier to read and understand, 
because walking through R code line by line with examples can answer 
many questions that are not easily answered from the printed page alone.


       hope this helps.
       spencer
p.s.  It will be a sad commentary on Rice and the academic tenure system 
in the US if Hadley is denied tenure.  He has made a major contribution 
to the R community and through that to all of humanity through all the 
people around the world who use R to help them better understand and 
manage their own social, political, and physical environments.

            

      
      
      
    

        

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Peter Dalgaard
    

    

      
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On Nov 13, 2011, at 20:53 , Alex Ruiz Euler wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
At any rate, R-help has always allowed R-related course announcements, commercial or not. The position has been that as long as it is of interest for R users and not overly intrusive, it is accepted. (Posters need to beware the potential negative publicity from perceived spamming, though.) 

R developers have been enrolled as teachers for commercial courses (as well as non-commercial or semi-commercial ones) and of course been paid for their work. I don't see a particular problem with someone cutting out the middle man.

Peter D.

            

      
      
      
    

        

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    
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