📊

Data Scientist (with R): 1st July 2025

Newsletters sent once a week, unsubscribe anytime.

Published 1st July 2025

👥 R Community & Events

R Weekly 2025-W27 R package quality, in the Nix of Time! (rweekly​.org). R package quality insights, multilingual publishing FAQs, new tools like notionR and MultiLCIRT, and R community events highlighted by contributors

Announcing New Stats Software Peer Review Editors: Emi Tanaka and Nima Hejazi (ropensci​.org). Emi Tanaka and Nima Hejazi join rOpenSci as new Stats Software Peer Review Editors, enhancing open-source software and statistical methods accessibility

Social Coworking and Office Hours - Research Software Engineering and R (ropensci​.org). Join Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal and Yanina Bellini Saibene for online coworking focused on Research Software Engineering and R on July 1, 2025

🔧 R Packages & Development Tools

How to open files, folders, websites in R (masalmon​.eu). Explore R functions like utils::file.edit, usethis::use_r, and browseURL for efficiently opening files, folders, and websites in your R projects

Counting Digits Quickly (jcarroll​.com​.au). Exploring digit counting in R using the quickr package to transpile R to Fortran for performance improvements and implementation insights

mirai 2.4.0 (shikokuchuo​.net). Mirai 2.4.0 introduces cluster_config() for HPC, enabling seamless daemon deployment and async processing within distributed environments for R users

Decoding OAuth2 M2M with httr2: Client Setup & API Testing (drmowinckels​.io). Setup of OAuth2 Machine-to-Machine client in R with httr2, handling authentication flows, and testing APIs using vcr and testthat

May 2025 Top 40 New CRAN Packages (rworks​.dev). Top 40 new CRAN packages covering diverse fields like climate science, machine learning, genomics, and decision analysis, featuring tools like RANSAC and aggreCAT

Introducing vitals, a toolkit for evaluating LLM products in R (tidyverse​.org). vitals, an R toolkit for evaluating large language model (LLM) products, simplifies assessments of custom chat and query chat apps using datasets of challenging coding problems

Setting Future Plans in R Functions — and Why You Probably Shouldn't (jottr​.org). Explore the future package in R, its 10-year anniversary, and the debate on temporarily setting future backends in functions

📊 Data Visualization & Graphics

Sankey plots can work, but need polishing like any other graphic (freerangestats​.info). Improving Sankey plots through design, R's ggsankey package, and alluvial plots to enhance clarity in visualizing patient severity trends over time

He was a spy and a scam artist who also invented the bar chart (mathewingram​.com). William Playfair, a spy and scam artist, invented the bar and pie charts and pioneered line charts while navigating a life of scandal and debt

“Visualise, Optimise, Parameterise!” - Writing dataviz code - UPDATED (r-consortium​.org). Enhance R visualizations with parameterization, reusability, interactivity using ggiraph, and avoid common pitfalls for effective data storytelling

Various Hill Plots (entropicthoughts​.com). Explore Hill plots for various distributions, including normal, exponential, logistic, and heavy-tailed types like Cauchy and Pareto, enhancing understanding of tail behavior

💻 Shiny & Interactive Applications

Interactive Image Mapper using RShiny (analytics-tuts​.com). Build an interactive EXIF Image Mapper using RShiny, leaflet, and exifr to visualize GPS metadata from photos

Shiny in Production 2025: Lightning Talk Lineup (jumpingrivers​.com). Shiny in Production 2025 showcases lightning talks on epidemiological surveillance, lifeguard monitoring, UI-first development, cancer treatments, and app management challenges using R and Shiny

Building Trust with Code: Validating Shiny Apps in Regulated Environments (jumpingrivers​.com). Validation of Shiny apps in regulated industries ensures reliability, compliance, and documentation, utilizing tools like Litmus and emphasizing risk-based approaches

Posit @ PyCon US 2025: Try Our Demo Labs! (posit​.co). Explore Posit’s demo labs at PyCon US 2025; learn about RStudio, Jupyter, VS Code, secure package repositories, and tools for dynamic data insights

🧮 Statistics & Modeling

A Simple Bayesian Multi-state Survival Model for a Clinical Trial (rworks​.dev). Bayesian multi-state survival model utilizing discrete time Markov Chains and absorbing Markov chains for asthma treatment trial analysis

Kurser efter sommaren (statistikakademin​.se). Online courses in statistics, including SPSS and R, focusing on data handling, descriptive statistics, regression, and model validation. Discounts available for course packages

Why we are all naturally Bayesians not frequentists (seascapemodels​.org). Bayesian statistics is rational; frequentism relies on likelihood without prior probabilities, leading to issues in small sample sizes, especially in ecology

Random Vector Functional Link (RVFL) artificial neural network with 2 regularization parameters successfully used for forecasting/synthetic simulation in professional settings: Extensions (including Bayesian) (thierrymoudiki​.github​.io). RVFL artificial neural network utilizes Bayesian and Ridge2 techniques for effective forecasting and simulation in professional domains using Python and R implementations

🔬 Research Applications

BOM On Target: Assessing the Bureau's Forecast Accuracy (blog​.foletta​.net). Assessing BOM’s forecast accuracy using temperature data, jaggedness index, error modeling, and comparing performance across Australian states

DEE2 database gets HDF5 (genomespot​.blogspot​.com). DEE2 database introduces HDF5, enhancing data access efficiency for transcriptome analysis using E. coli datasets

Most Friday linkfests aren’t real (dynamicecology​.wordpress​.com). Highlights include Sarah Boon's memoir 'Meltdown', EcoEvoApps for simulating ecology models, and discussions on highbrow climate misinformation and meta-analysis in psychology

Sociology (kieranhealy​.org). Exploration of recent sociological research, including topics such as mortality rates, neighborhood studies, and data visualization techniques

📚 Academic Research

Bayesian Modeling for Aggregated Relational Data: A Unified Perspective (arxiv:stat). Bayesian modeling for aggregated relational data using Stan to improve model fitting, runtime, and diagnostics in social network analysis across various fields

medRCT: Causal mediation analysis estimating interventional effects mapped to a target trial in R (joss​.theoj​.org). Causal mediation analysis with medRCT in R, estimating interventional effects linked to target trial design. Authored by Chen, Dashti, and Moreno-Betancur

👋 Before you go

I've got a big favor to ask - keeping Blaze running isn't expensive, but it does all add up, so I'm asking readers like you to help, if you can.
That's why I'm launching a Patreon page!. Nothing flashy, just a way for folks who find value in these newsletters to chip in a little each month. In return, you'll get:

  • Real say in how Blaze evolves — vote on new topics, features, topic curation ideas
  • First dibs on merch (details still cooking)
  • That warm fuzzy feeling knowing you're supporting something that saves you time and keeps you plugged into great tech writing

If you are getting value from blaze, checking this out would mean the world. And if you can't contribute, no worries—the newsletters keep coming either way, and you can follow along on patreon for free.
Thanks for reading and being part of this nerdy corner of the internet. All the best - Alastair.

You may also like

About Data Scientist (with R)

Our Data Scientist newsletter covers the latest developments, packages, techniques, and insights in R programming and data science. Each week, we curate the most important content from your favourite R blogs so you don't have to spend hours searching.

Whether you're a beginner or expert in data science with R, our newsletter provides valuable information to keep you informed.

Subscribe now to join thousands of professionals who receive our weekly updates!