Courses
WSDS 2019 will offer two half-day courses on Thursday, October 3. Courses are ticketed events that require an additional fee.
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Introduction to Spark with R
Instructor: Kelly O’Briant, RStudio
This course will be a “hands-on” introduction to sparklyr, a package that facilitates a connection between R and Spark. If you’ve ever wanted experience working with big data, this is an opportunity to learn about and interact with tools that make scalable, distributed data processing a reality. We’ll connect to Spark, learn the fundamentals of working with Spark in R, and explore practical applications of Spark SQL and sparklyr functionality. Learners should have basic familiarity with doing data science tasks in R.
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Communicating Quantitative Information Is Hard! Strategies for Success
Instructor: Regina Nuzzo, Gallaudet University
You’re an expert in your field. You’re passionate about the subject. So then why does it sometimes feel like such a struggle to help others really understand important concepts and results in your work? It’s not just you. Experts are now realizing that communicating statistics and data science information is surprisingly hard—harder than most other fields, actually, and definitely not something for which most of us have received any training. Luckily, there are a few relatively straightforward strategies that can go a long way in making things easier. This course will be a fun and interactive look at those strategies, with opportunities to practice new skills in a safe and supportive environment. Non-native English language users and/or those who have traumatic memories of high-school English class are especially welcome.