The Statistical Computing and Data Visualisation Section is now offering tutorials.
Working Smarter with Targets presented by Miles McBain.
A half-day introduction to the {targets} framework for R projects.
Summary
This workshop is for useRs interested in smarter, faster, and more reproducible data analysis project workflows. You will learn about the R package {targets} and why it is one of the most important tools for 'getting stuff done' with R since the {tidyverse}. The objective of this session is to jump start your {targets} knowledge, and walk through the process of refactoring an existing project to take advantage {targets}.
Target audience
Participants should have prior experience working through at least one challenging data analysis project using R.
Presenter
Miles McBain is a Data Scientist and R package developer who has been using {targets} since release for large data analysis projects in the Public and Not-for-profit sectors.
Structure of workshop
| time |
topic |
| TBA |
Motivating Targets: Strengths and weaknesses of typical R project workflows |
| TBA |
Pure functions and their benefits as units of work |
| TBA |
The {targets} plan and the two kinds of reproducibility |
| TBA |
Long vs Wide processes |
| TBA |
New debugging access panels |
| TBA |
Divide and conquer with branching |
| TBA |
Things that may go wrong and where to get help |
| TBA |
Advanced topics: Meta-programming, Tarcheytypes, Multi-plan projects, Cloud computing |
As we step through each topic we'll refactor our starter project using our new knowledge.
Getting started
-
You should have a reasonably up to date version of R (e.g. 4.3+), and a text editor setup you feel comfortable being productive with (E.g. RStudio, VSCode, ESS + Emacs, Vim + NvimR). It's going to be less typing if you can use the {rstudioapi} via either RStudio or VSCode.
-
Make sure you have these packages installed:
install.packages(c("targets", "tarchetypes", "tidyverse", "conflicted", "galah", "here", "sf", "h3jsr", "ggspatial"))
If you're a Linux user sf might give you some challenges (but you're used to that, right?). Be sure to study their README.
- Our example project is going to pull data from the Atlas of Living Australia, so create an account with a valid email address, here: https://auth.ala.org.au/userdetails/registration/createAccount
Cancellation Policy
Occasionally courses have to be cancelled due to a lack of subscription. Early registration ensures that this will not happen.
Cancellations received prior to two weeks before the event will be refunded, minus a $25 administration fee. From then onward no part of the registration fee will be refunded. However, registrations are transferable within the same organisation. Please advise any changes to events@statsoc.org.au.
For any questions, please email events@statsoc.org.au
@StatSocAus
