How the R for Data Science (R4DS) Online Learning Community Made Me a Better Student

Transcript#

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Hi everyone, my name is Lydia Gibson and I'm really excited to be here in front of you all today talking about a community that's really near and dear to my heart. So today I'm going to be talking to you about how the R for Data Science Online Learning Community Made Me a Better Student.

Now a little bit about me, I just graduated with my Masters in Statistics this past May and then the following month I began working at Intel as a Data Scientist and it's a career I never imagined myself in, the same way I never imagined myself standing right in front of you all today giving this talk at posit.conf and the reason why is I wanted to be a fashion designer when I was younger.

Yeah, so growing up my grandmother used to make matching outfits for my sister and I and I loved clothing and so in my teens I used to sketch outfits that I would want to wear, taking inspiration from magazines like Seventeen and Teen Vogue and I even designed my own prom dress which my grandmother constructed for me.

I don't actually know how to sew, but eventually, but yeah so when I started out on my journey as far as changing careers, I had no experience programming. I am actually 31, I returned to school in my 30s to get my Masters and I didn't have experience with statistics for the most part, no former programming experience and I didn't care about R, but unfortunately it is a necessary evil if you're going to go back to school for statistics and I imagine a lot of you also may not have cared about R at some point, but yeah, you might not have cared about it, but you did care about the things you can do for it, whether it's statistics, biology, something geospatial, eventually you did care about it and for me what made me care about it was data visualization.

So in data visualization I was able to feed my need for that creativity while also still learning things that were relevant to what I was doing in my coursework and kind of like what Megan mentioned of how it's great to learn when you're doing something that's fun, it's also great to learn when you have friends to learn with and luckily I was able to find that in the R for Data Science online learning community.

Joining the R4DS community

So pictured here with me is John Harmon and he is the Chief Community Manager and Data Scientist of the R for Data Science online learning community and him along with his merry band of mentors and facilitators, of which I am one, they've created this amazing welcoming learning environment, mostly based in Slack, where beginners and advanced folks alike can come together and learn various topics not necessarily only related to R but just data science as a whole.

So for me, with my interest piqued in data visualization, the most likely choice for me as far as book clubs was the ggplot2 book club and there in that book club it was me statistics, programming, and data viz newbie and I'm there with folks who are R consultants and actuaries and PhD students and there's the little old me.

So honestly it was terrifying, the same way I'm somewhat terrified up here right now, but because the way the R community is and R for DS, it was kind of easy to transition into it. So for me, with my imposter syndrome and just nerves, I decided I'm just going to jump right into it and I presented chapter three and actually it's, I just had my two-year anniversary of my first presentation.

It was kind of a basic R markdown presentation, but I did it and I got really great feedback and everyone was so welcoming and I was just, I fell in love with that community because I was able to move past that fear, get out of my comfort zone, and then get in a learning zone.

I was able to move past that fear, get out of my comfort zone, and then get in a learning zone.

So and yeah, so by merging my love of like fashion design with data viz, I was just yeah, I was just like in love and really into it. So I was able to take the things I was learning in my book club and put it towards works I was doing in classes, being able to not only use like the utility of things you can do in Basar, but taking ggplot2 and giving my visualizations a little bit of pizzazz, putting a little bit of myself into my visualizations.

And obviously the same way in R for DS where it's, you're able to get help from folks, I was able to take my visions of what I wanted from my visualizations and with the help of my friends, especially my friend Ken, be able to create these visualizations that were in my head and then put them on the screen. And then even through R for DS, I learned about the various extension packages you could make with ggplot2 and just a whole new world opened up for me.

And I also learned about the Data Visualization Society and did a mentorship program, just feeding my need for that creativity. And following that, I eventually ended up doing another book club, facilitating a data visualization with our book club by Rob Kabacoff, and even was able to bring in my friends and teach them things that I had learned, and through that, learning, reinforcing my learning as well.

Takeaways

So then I guess I'll leave you with a couple of takeaways. I know this is very short, but yeah, it's kind of like finding what you're passionate about and exploring its steps, especially as someone new to the field of statistics or data science, there's so many tools we could learn, and honestly, it's overwhelming. So if you can just take that one thing that you're passionate about and explore its steps, you can learn so many more things.

And then being surrounded by folks more advanced than you is a gift, it's not a curse. It can be scary, it can be overwhelming, and you have this sense of imposter syndrome, but if you look at it as the opportunity versus that vulnerability, it opens up so many more doors for you. For example, me even finding out about the Data Visualization Society.

And then being surrounded by folks more advanced than you is a gift, it's not a curse. It can be scary, it can be overwhelming, and you have this sense of imposter syndrome, but if you look at it as the opportunity versus that vulnerability, it opens up so many more doors for you.

And then teaching is the best way to learn. I've honestly learned so much by facilitating book clubs and just facilitating book clubs and having to teach others the things I know and just it being reinforced.

So this is my friend Ken, and my unofficial motto, I suppose, is always be networking. And yeah, I'm like a broken record when it comes to my friends telling them this. And it's just because I know how great communities like R4DS, R-Ladies, and generally the R community in general is that I think it's so important for folks to get involved, and hopefully my talk may have inspired some folks to get involved in R4DS.

If you want to join, it's r4ds.io slash join. If you want to be a mentor, r4ds.io slash join, and ping John the Greek. And also if you want to sponsor, to keep communities like this going, so people like me can learn and somehow become data scientists like they never envisioned.

Q&A

So we are taking questions in Slido, which you probably all know at this point, but just a reminder. One question so far. What advice would you give to someone who's new to R, but doesn't know where to start or what they're interested in? R seems vast and overwhelming to explore.

So where to start? As far as starting within the R4DS online community, I actually made a repo. So in that third link, I have a repo about information about joining your first R4DS book club. And I've included things like downloading R, the RStudio IDE, or even getting to Posit Cloud. And then because R4DS, with our book clubs, we use GitHub, some intro stuff as far as learning GitHub. And just checking out our Slack. There's so many topics when it comes to R. There's shiny , there's geospatial, anything you can think of. And just kind of search within there, I would say.

How the R for Data Science (R4DS) Online Learning Community Made Me a Better Student - posit::conf

Transcript#

Joining the R4DS community

Takeaways

Q&A