The more I code in languages other than #rstats, the less I like R’s preference for implicit returns. Sure, you can save yourself a line of code, but the explicit return just feels better

New edudata blog post: being “data driven” vs being “data informed” #edusky #databs www.edudata.blog/being-data-i...

Most data science work is just asking SMEs to help me understand their data/help me make sure I’m filtering the data correctly.

I just pushed v0.1.0 of my {blueycolors} #rstats package to GitHub. Check it out if you’re interested in using Bluey-themed colors in ggplot: ekholme.github.io/blueycolors/

After a few week hiatus, edudata is back with another post. This one reviews Virginia’s fall-to-spring VALLSS growth report and offers some critiques about measuring student growth using ordinal categories: www.edudata.blog/virginias-va... #dataBS #edusky

I just learned about “doubleML models.” Is this just data science/ML people trying to reinvent causal inference with the worst name possible? #rstats #datascience

This week’s Edudata blog post is on the narrative fallacy, school improvement, and root cause analysis www.edudata.blog/the-narrativ... #education

I’ve been doing stats/data stuff “seriously” for about 10 years, and I still think bootstrapping is voodoo. It’s the “ONE WEIRD TRICK” of statistics.

Among my favorites, from @cameronpat.bsky.social

New edudata blog post: alternatives to stacked bar charts, and some thoughts on tradeoffs when visualizing data #dataBS #rstats #edusky www.edudata.blog/stacked-bar-...

New edudata blog post: In which I self-consciously offer a framework for data-driven decision making #datascience #edusky www.edudata.blog/some-hopeful...

TFW the Google Gemini VSCode extension just writes your #rstats function documentation for you

New edudata blog post: what can educators learn from luxury brands like Hermes? #edusky #dataBS www.edudata.blog/luxury-goods...

I keep coming across new lists of education research (and adjacent) job opportunities so if you are looking for work, check out these links. 👇 docs.google.com/spreadsheets... docs.google.com/spreadsheets... docs.google.com/spreadsheets... www.purposephilcareer.com

New edudata post: do we really need “big data” to tell us obvious things? www.edudata.blog/i-feel-like-...

I’m writing an #rstats package to work with data extracts (csvs) from a specific source. I mostly want a set of functions that will do data-frame-like operations on these extracts. My inclination is to create a new class that’s a thin wrapper around the data (formatted as a dataframe)…

For my educator friends in the RVA area, VCU is hosting (and I’m helping run) a free event on AI in education on 4/16.

“I’ll be 10 min late sorry!!!” -ashamed -fragile -unreliable “A thousand apologies. The relentless slog of time has overtaken my faculties.” -powerful -commanding -honest

This week’s Edudata newsletter is a reaction to Emily Oster’s recent article on why we still need test scores: www.edudata.blog/reaction-to-... #dataBS #edusky

This week’s Edudata newsletter is about writing, AI, and owning your thinking: www.edudata.blog/writing-for-... #dataBS #edusky

New edudata post: when do predictions about students’ future performance help? www.edudata.blog/when-do-pred... #edusky #databs

New edudata blog post: does your data structure match the question you want to answer? www.edudata.blog/does-your-da... #edusky #databs

I haven’t done #TidyTuesday in years apparently, but I decided to fiddle with this week’s dataset to play with the S7 system in #rstats github.com/ekholme/Tidy... I haven’t used it enough to have an opinion, but I’m excited to see where this goes!

Anyone have resources/suggestions on including spatial data (lat/long) in a propensity score model? My gut is to use a non-parametric model (eg random forest) to predict intervention exposure and then use those predictions to get weights. But spatial data is not my expertise #databs #rstats

In this week’s Edudata post, I review the (completely overcomplicated and superfluous) Readiness component of Virginia’s school performance framework: www.edudata.blog/reviewing-vd... #databs #edusky

Data management is worth the effort. 🙌

In this week’s Edudata post, I continue exploring VDOE’s school performance framework. I dig into the Growth component in this one. Tl;dr I think it’s bad #edusky #databs www.edudata.blog/reviewing-vd...

@quarto.org and Typst are cool, but rendering to pdf is still a miserable process #rstats

This week’s Edudata post is the first in a series where I examine the VDOE’s new school performance framework: #databs #edusky www.edudata.blog/reviewing-vd...

Today’s Edudata post: your graphs should be opinionated www.edudata.blog/graphs-shoul... #dataBS #edusky

After struggling to figure out how to accomplish something in #rstats… It turns out I just needed c()

Today’s nemesis is command line string interpolation #dataBS

New edudata post today: do less, document more: www.edudata.blog/do-less-docu... #dataBS #edusky

I’ve been building some internal report tooling lately, and i wanted to plug this blog by @meghanhall.bsky.social because it’s been super helpful: meghan.rbind.io/blog/2024-08... #databs

In today’s Edudata post, I explore two (and a half) ways to use student addresses as meaningful data points. www.edudata.blog/two-and-a-ha... #dataBS #edusky

This week on Counting Stuff, log first and think later, because storage is cheap, right? A bit of a rant on how not thinking first makes things much more expensive and hard later #dataBS www.counting-stuff.com/storage-is-c...

I recently started writing a newsletter at the intersection of education and data — I’d love it if you’d check it out! In today’s post, I consider the costs & benefits of data, when gathering data is “worth it,” and I poke fun at NoVa #databs #edusky www.edudata.blog/is-your-data...

I’m convinced that becoming a better programmer basically means using lots of assert / stopifnot() and writing tons of tests #databs #rstats

How is everyone structuring their data pipelines? I’ve long been in the habit of writing a package that implements all of the functions, classes, etc, then actually running the pipeline in a different directory with its own scripts, etc. But it might be easier to just use 1 directory?… #databs

What platforms/stacks are people using for writing newsletters these days? Basically I want a blog people can subscribe to. Is it just substack, or are there other alternatives? I’m fine doing a little bit of setup, but I have limited time and would rather spend time writing than hosting etc

Something I’ve learned about myself… if I don’t write my tests immediately after I write a function, I’m not going to write them ever #dataBS

I’ve been doing this year’s Advent of Code in #golang, and it’s really making me appreciate static typing. There’s something very fulfilling to defining a function signature and then writing the code that complies with it #dataBS

A common question I've seen from #data folks using Quarto is how to gate content or protect a site behind a login Just wrote a short tech note on my blog about my recent experience using Netlify Identity for this www.emilyriederer.com/post/quarto-...

Im doing more and more data engineering as part of my data science job. I enjoy it, but I don’t feel like I have the strongest background here. Can #dataBS recommend any books/readings/resources?

My 4 y/o just told me that bath water is “kid’s wine…because only kids can drink it and not adults”

Remember: whatever happens today, it comes down to whether you pressed refresh enough

Migrating this old(er) #rstats content to #dataBS: here’s a step-by-step guide for deploying an API using R, Quarto, and plumber on Google Cloud github.com/ekholme/gcp_...

🌶️ Halloween take:

Since I’m new to #DataBS, I figured I’d do an introduction. I’m Eric. I’m a data scientist for a large school division (65k+) students near Richmond, VA. I have a PhD in Ed psych, and I’m interested in R, causal inference, and bayesian stats, but I dabble in all things tech/data