MSACL 2019 US Abstract

Making a Case for Why Programming Will Save You Time

Shannon E. Ellis
University of California, San Diego, CA

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Shannon Ellis (Presenter) University of California San Diego

Presenter Bio: Shannon Ellis is an Assistant Teaching Professor at UC San Diego. Before joining the Cognitive Science Department at UC San Diego, she received her Ph.D. in human genetics from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Shannon is passionate about data science, ethical data analysis, and education. One priority of her work has been working to ensure that data science education is accessible to underrepresented populations and groups who typically have not had access to such materials.

Relevant Financial Disclosures (within past 24 months) Discussing Products? NO, presenter will NOT present educational content related to products/services of the ineligible company(ies) listed above. Conflict mitigation NOT REQUIRED.

If you’ve ever spent too much time manually editing hundreds of cells in Excel or been unable to reproduce someone else’s analysis due to lack of detail in their methods, then programming can help make your life easier. Data Science skills enable researchers’ analyses to be speedier and more reproducible. However, many think the learning curve for obtaining these skills is too steep. It’s my goal to convince you that everyone can program, regardless of their background in computing! In this talk, I’ll explain why you may want to learn to program, demonstrate how you can get started, and point you in the direction of helpful data science resources.

You’ll learn the basics of R programming, get hands-on experience working with data, and leave with tangible next steps and helpful resources to use as you continue learning and mastering data science skills.

If you’re interested in acquainting yourself with material before this session, getting an account at https://rstudio.cloud and familiarizing yourself a bit with this platform will help you get the most out of this session. And, having a computer with you so that you can practice during this session is recommended.