Data Scientist (with R): 22nd July 2025
🔧 R community, packages and open science
Metascience of pull requests (argmin.net). Ben Recht critiques classical inferential statistics in machine learning, advocating for open data and reproducibility over traditional statistical methods
R Weekly 2025-W30 Positron Assistant, LLM-powered posit::conf guide (rweekly.org). Highlights from R Weekly: LLM-powered coding, new CRAN packages, data analysis tools, and insights from the R community
R Package Quality: Maintainer Criteria (jumpingrivers.com). Evaluating R package maintenance: bug closure rates, maintainers, source control, and contributor analysis using Litmus for quality assurance
Tidyverse developer day 2025 (tidyverse.org). 2025 Tidyverse Developer Day on September 19 features collaboration, GitHub skills, and contributions, offering a supportive environment for all experience levels
A joint Research Methods/Statistics blog post with Beth Morling (notawfulandboring.blogspot.com). Discussion on repatriation of remains, self-correction in science, and adherence to the scientific method with Beth Morling
🤖 AI and LLM tools for R development
How I’m using Claude Code to write R code (simonpcouch.com). Utilizing Claude Code for R programming by leveraging project context, MCP servers, and maintaining dynamic CLAUDE.md files for improved code assistance
R and the Model Context Protocol (tidyverse.org). Initial release of mcptools for R implements Model Context Protocol, enhancing LLM interactions and warning on potential security risks from capability mixing
Positron Assistant: GitHub Copilot and Claude-Powered Agentic Coding in R (blog.stephenturner.us). Explore Positron Assistant, GitHub Copilot, and Anthropic Claude for streamlined R package development with inline code completions and agent mode features
Tidy RAG in R with ragnar (blog.stephenturner.us). Demonstration of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) in R using ragnar for web scraping and querying university grant funding data
Your LLM-powered guide to the posit::conf(2025) agenda (posit.co). Explore posit::conf(2025) agenda with workshops, talks, LLM-powered Shiny app, and highlights on R, Python, data science innovations in Atlanta
📊 Statistical modeling and data analysis
Numbers of the Beast: Sasquatch Distribution Modelling (weirddatascience.net). Exploring Sasquatch sightings in North America through statistical modeling, identifying environmental factors for cryptid habitats and examining folklore's role in these phenomena
Learn Stan with brms, Part III (solomonkurz.netlify.app). Explore fitting models with mean-centered predictors in brms, focusing on intercept priors and transformations in Stan code
Advancing Causal Inference in Ecology: pathways for biodiversity change detection and attribution (rekyt.github.io). Causal inference in ecology with R packages for biodiversity change detection and attribution, featuring contributions from prominent researchers in the field
Within-person factorial experiments, log(normal) reaction-time data (solomonkurz.netlify.app). Exploration of within-person factorial experiments using log-normal reaction time data, emphasizing GLMM for causal inference and analysis in psychology
The Node at 15 – Then and now with Joachim Goedhart (thenode.biologists.com). Joachim Goedhart reflects on 15 years of The Node, discussing data visualization, statistical analysis, fluorescent proteins, and recent technological advancements in microscopy
📚 Academic Research
Fast Variational Bayes for Large Spatial Data (arxiv:stat). spVarBayes offers fast variational Bayesian methods for large-scale geospatial data, matching spNNGP's accuracy while enhancing computational efficiency using NNGP
👋 Before you go
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