Description:

You can’t use R for data analysis unless you can get your data into R. Getting your data into R can be a major hassle, so in the last few months Hadley has been working hard to make it easier.

In this webinar Hadley will discuss the places you most often find data (databases, excel, text files, other statistical packages, web apis, and web pages) and the packages (DBI, xml2, jsonlite, haven, readr, exel) that make it easy to get your data into R.

Presenter:
Hadley Wickham – Hadley is Chief Scientist at RStudio and Adjunct Professor of Statistics at Rice University. His work includes R packages for data analysis (ggplot2, plyr, reshape2); packages that make R less frustrating (lubridate for dates, stringr for strings, httr for accessing web APIs); and that make it easier to do good software development in R (roxygen2, testthat,devtools, lineprof, staticdocs). He is also a writer, educator, and frequent contributor to conferences promoting more accessible and more effective data analysis. GitHub

Best Regards,
RStudio

Webinar Recordings:

All of our previous webinars have been recorded and can be found here:

Previous Webinars include:

• The Grammar and Graphics of Data Science

• Reproducible Reporting

• Interactive Reporting

• Managing package dependencies in R with packrat

• Data wrangling with R & RStudio

• Version control with git, github and RStudio

• Creating JavaScript data visualizations in R

• shinyapps.io overview and Tour

• Dynamic Dashboards with Shiny

• How to Convert R Code to Shiny Code

Socrata is a growing outfit that manages DBs for cities and non-profits.  This guy did a nice how-to page of his work with Socrata, and we thank him.

https://thomaslevine.com/!/socrata-summary/

May 18, 2015

“In this era, when data journalism is seen as a way forward to deal with difficult issues in a balanced, unbiased manner, it is important to understand the rules that govern statistical data collection.”
A.S. Paneerselvam

“Last week, Special Public Prosecutor B.V. Acharya said that a glaring arithmetical error by the Karnataka High Court in computing the loans taken from banks by All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary Jayalalithaa, her aides and their firms resulted in their acquittal. While it is for the highest judiciary to decide on the exactness of computation of loans and the legitimate income in Ms. Jayalalithaa’s case, it raises an interesting question about the skills journalists need to possess to evaluate facts.

One of the early lessons I learnt about being a journalist was the importance of constant skill enhancement and the need for comprehensive revision of domain expertise…”[MORE]

So cool: The @washingtonpost Talent Network. Like Uber or Task Rabbit, but to hire freelance reporters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A4ORGOYRMjE Retweet from Mariam Rom

 An impressive and innovative class this spring at San Diego State University. Sensor Journalism 101. Check it out at http://ow.ly/MSucm

IRE and Esri have partnered to offer fellowships to attend mapping training at the 2015 Esri Conference from July 18-22 in San Diego or the IRE Mapping Boot Camp from August 7-9 at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Mo.

The Esri Conference fellowships cover airfare and four nights lodging, and the Boot Camp fellowships cover airfare and three nights lodging. The Esri Conference schedule includes attendance at the following events: Esri Business Summit (July 18-19) to learn about how international businesses are using advanced mapping technology: Conference Plenary Session (July 20); and hands-on training for journalists. The application deadline is May 14. Apply now! http://ow.ly/MS2jU

Complaints from student journalists about the university’s communications department, and its chief spokesman Christopher Bugbee, are echoed by members of the professional media.

Source: A History of Choking off Transparency at Cal State Fullerton | Voice of OC

Maplight, a 501(c)(3) foundation, recently announced its “extensive mapping project examining the geographic origin of contributions to legislators by state; contributions from companies to legislators by state; and roll call votes by state and district on key bills in Congress.”

Today’s news peg points to “Who in Your State Has Contributed Money to Majority Leader Candidate Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)?”

MapLight looks to be a good edition to our GIS toolbox.

Thanks to Margo Williams for passing this interview along. It’s filled with important tips and insights gained from Myers’ years of experience. Read the full interview with Myers at http://www.icij.org/blog/2014/06/try-and-find-narnia-wardrobe-inside-work-research-specialist

“Paul Myers is an internet research specialist working in the U.K. media. He joined the BBC in 1995 as a news information researcher. This followed an earlier career in computers and internet experience dating back to the 1970s.

“These days, his role sees him organise and deliver training courses related to internet investigation, digital security, social media research, data journalism, freedom of information and reporting statistics. His techniques have helped his colleagues develop creative approaches to research, conduct their investigations securely and have led many journalists to information they would never have otherwise been able to find. He has worked with leading British T.V. & radio news, current affairs, documentaries and consumer programmes.”

The first Tow Research conference, Quantifying Journalism: Metrics, Data and Computation, on May 30, 2014 reflected on a big year in data journalism. Quantifying Journalism: Data, Metrics, and Computation brought together academics, practitioners and technologists to explore three critical questions at the heart of the data journalism conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMDMCIv0-So