Enabling Frequent Brain Dumps

Short version: Check out my sub-blog called Notes.

One of the goals I had when I started this blog was to just put more of what I do online. However over time I’ve noticed that in order for me to feel like an idea is “worthy” of a blog post it has to be at least either well-polished or inherently interesting. There are problems with both of these criteria: well-polished work takes a significant amount of time which I don’t always have, and work that I think is uninteresting could be useful to others. David Robinson illustrated this idea beautifully in a recent talk:

"Things that are still on your computer are approximately useless." -@drob #eUSR #eUSR2017 pic.twitter.com/nS3IBiRHBn

— Amelia McNamara (@AmeliaMN) November 3, 2017

Snippets of code, figures, and thoughts that are stuck on my computer have no chance of being helpful to anyone else! Therefore in order to post more mundane content more often without diminishing the posts on Postcards I’m starting a sub-blog called Notes. My goal with notes is to leave fewer ideas and slices of code “on the cutting room floor” with the additional benefit of being able to develop ideas which may lead to other posts or projects. Here are three recent notes that might interest you:

• Grouped Comparisons Graph
  • Making quick grouped bar graphs in ggplot2.
• Data Science from Scratch
  • Tips for breaking into R-flavored data science.
• Lagging Variables Within Groups
  • Fun with lagging variables with dplyr.

Thanks to Os Keyes and of course David Robinson for the inspiration!