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Data Scientist (with R): 22nd July 2025

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Published 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

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.
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Thanks for reading and being part of this nerdy corner of the internet. All the best - Alastair.

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