delight: (more bright flowers)
primum non nocere sans documentum ([personal profile] delight) wrote2018-08-30 02:56 pm
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I know I have a few math people out there, so dear math people, please help!

(Okay, except to some of you, your response will be "statistics is not math," we can fight about that later. I identify as a stats person but firmly not a math person myself - it's hard to be a math person with dyscalculia, but it actually isn't hard to be a statistician at all!)

Today I learned that my job can't keep maintaining my SPSS license, and also that for the same budgetary reasons, we can't really afford to pay for training on R; R's software is thankfully free. My graduate school did have classes in the topic but they were outside my track and were always filled by biostat majors before any elective slots even opened.

What I am looking for, then, is good free Internet resources for learning R! I already know both SAS and SPSS and don't need a from-nothing background necessarily, but one of those might be easier to locate.

Thanks in advance!
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brainwane: My smiling face, including a small gold bindi (Default)

Data Carpentry workshop

[personal profile] brainwane 2018-08-30 07:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Your org can request a free Data Carpentry workshop that would come in and teach your colleagues basic R, for free.

If you and your colleagues program a little bit, Software Carpentry might be a better fit.

The lessons are also available to read and use for free online: SC, DC.
delight: (only a bit broken)

Re: Data Carpentry workshop

[personal profile] delight 2018-08-30 08:13 pm (UTC)(link)
This is so useful, I'll pitch it up to the board. :) We have a couple of programmer-nurses who would likely love the more complex version, too.
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (d20 (credit: bag_fu on LJ))

[personal profile] yhlee 2018-08-30 08:12 pm (UTC)(link)
I wish I could help, but my response really is "statistics is a type of math I was not trained in." (I mostly did abstract/applied algebra, which would probably kill a dyscalculic dead because it's the field that includes number theory.) At Cornell U., Math is in the College of Arts & Sciences and Statistics/Biometry is in the College of Agriculture! Why, I don't know. However, let me ping my friends on FB--one of them is an epidemiologist and I think she uses R, so she might know of resources.
delight: (watermelons)

[personal profile] delight 2018-08-30 08:17 pm (UTC)(link)
That's actually a new one on the math/not math fight, I'm going to have to mention it to my mentor. XD

By graduate degree I'm also technically an epidemiologist, though my community medicine focus means we didn't do a huge amount of stats, but most do actually use R and someone else in the same field might even know things that make sense in our context, much appreciated.

(The words 'number' and 'theory' next to each other are enough to have me finding a hole to hide in so you are right about that. I would probably have a confusion headache in about four seconds. 'Abstract' is like 100% the issue with dyscalculia - I can count things I can touch just fine but not numbers, etc.)
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (d20 (credit: bag_fu on LJ))

[personal profile] yhlee 2018-08-30 08:29 pm (UTC)(link)
It gets even better. Last time I was at Cornell (admittedly some years ago--we visited a while back), Math and Statistics were both in Malott hall, but had double glass doors to the building, one of which said Department of Math and the other of which said Department of Statistics & Biometry. I, as a math major, always made sure to enter through the appropriate door. ;)

Number theory is beautiful but...yeah. It's super, super abstract.
delight: (the dawn)

[personal profile] delight 2018-08-30 08:37 pm (UTC)(link)
That is amazing. I would have done the same thing! Also a piece of info to relate back to Jaz for sure. I hope the correct doors were used by the majority.

(Albany, last I was there, has two statistics offices. One's in Mathematics and one's in Social Sciences. It's divided by what else the person teaches.)
silveraspen: silver trees against a blue sky background (Default)

[personal profile] silveraspen 2018-08-31 01:11 pm (UTC)(link)
I’m eyeing your job’s budget decision a bit. That seems... short sighted.

Lynda.com has some resources; I think Udemy does too. This list from Rstudio seems helpful: https://www.rstudio.com/online-learning/
delight: (Default)

[personal profile] delight 2018-08-31 01:21 pm (UTC)(link)
I do most of my data work in Tableau so SPSS isn't used very often anymore (I only do outcomes analysis, we don't do original research at this agency) but the clincher is that we're 100% federally funded so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thank you for the link!
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (d20 (credit: bag_fu on LJ))

[personal profile] yhlee 2018-08-31 08:16 pm (UTC)(link)
From my epidemiologist friend, who uses SAS but pinged a friend of hers who uses R:
My go-to R guy recommends the book “R for Data Science” (available free online) and says he’s heard good things about Data Camp (not free) and recommends focusing on the tidyverse for someone who wants to get up and running ASAP vs digging into the nitty-gritty program language stuff.

I hope some of this is helpful!

R for Data Science appears to be here, BTW.
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