Not Elsewhere Classified

An assortment of thoughts, jokes, and, on occasion, useful things

Art as RStudio themes

code

R

design

As is becoming the norm for my RStudio theme inspirations, I was inspired by something I saw. This time, it was the works of Rosalie Gascoigne at the National Gallery of…

Limited Learning Mode: Why LLMs are my last resort

code

research

I was running an Intro to R workshop the other day and in the workshop material I’d included content on error messages, how to read them, and a checklist for steps to take…

Get to know the new President of the Statistical Society of Australia (it’s me)

community

SSA

self

I’m excited to announce… Or am I pleased to announce? Maybe I’m thrilled to announce!? Oh wait this isn’t LinkedIn.

Your Professional Society needs YOU

community

SSA

self

Why did the barrister only represent pastry chefs?

joke

Their speciality was torte law

Why did the monks never gossip when Thomas was around?

joke

He would always update his priors

Converting REDCap branching logic into R

code

R

REDCap

In cleaning a dataset, I encode information about data missingness. One such category of missingness is “not asked”, for questions that were not displayed to participants…

The role of perceived sandwich origin on gustatory satisfaction: a study protocol

research

I distinctly remember being a child and being very annoyed that no matter what I tried, I couldn’t make a sandwich that tasted as good as if my parents had made it for me. A…

Using R to extract results from Stata log files

R

Stata

code

Taking results from Stata and inserting them into a report is a colossal pain in the ass, to put it mildly. There are a few custom commands out there, like baselinetable…

What is the sheep’s favourite graph?

joke

A new RStudio theme: Ghost Gum

code

R

design

So I took a picture more than a year ago. I took it because I liked the colour palette of these logs and thought it would make a nice RStudio theme. Well, over a year later…

How did the geologist carry their books to school?

joke

In their rocksack

What the hell is networking?

academia

work

community

At some point in your student life or early in your career, you’ll get advice telling you how important networking is. What they probably don’t go on to explain is what the…

I can only play in your back yard if you invite me in

academia

code

statistics

I read a post called Statistics in the era of AI by Terry McGlynn. I hadn’t come across Terry before. He self-identifies as an ecologist and I have a lot of respect for…

Joining strings with missing data together in R

R

code

strings

Joining multiple string columns together in R isn’t a particularly tricky thing to do. Until recently though, I found it unreasonably annoying trying to join strings where…

What did the doctor prescribe Dumbo to help with his pain?

joke

Why don’t statisticians like getting feedback?

joke

Because they’re always \(E[\bar{X}]\)

My gardener friend crossbred cauliflower and watermelon and it was the saddest plant I’ve ever seen

joke

They said it was a meloncauli

Not all missings are created equal

R

code

I posted this question on Bluesky the other day, because I wasn’t sure whether a row-wise or column-wise solution would perform better for the problem I was trying to solve.

An R function for pronouns

R

code

quarto

People can have pronouns that change over time or multiple pronouns, like myself. In an ideal world, I’d love it if people used a random pronoun each time, but people aren’t…

tidyverse functions you might not know about

R

code

Sometimes you ask for help and people provide you with solutions using functions you didn’t know exist. That happened to me today and made me realise that I should look…

How did Francis pay for his ticket to heaven?

joke

A big ask: doing literally anything apparently

self

academia

This blog post is about Significance magazine and the transphobic dumpster fire of an article they published in 2023. Over the last couple of years I’ve gone back and forth…

What makes a good variable naming convention

survey design

R

code

research

In particular, what makes a good variable naming convention for a longitudinal or panel survey? I wanted to answer this question so I could propose a good naming convention…

What did Euclid say when Dante asked about his bronzed complexion?

joke

What did the psychic say before streaking across the pitch?

joke

All will be revealed

How can you tell that statisticians love Vietnamese food?

joke

They’re always talking about P(H0)

Switching from Stata to R

code

R

Stata

research

Making the transition from Stata to R can be challenging as the two languages are different in some fundamental ways. My initial training in biostatistics was using Stata…

Including your publications on your Quarto website

quarto

R

academia

In my efforts to continue to replicate my old website, I added a list of my publications. Read on if you’d like to do the same for your own Quarto website!

Migrating from blogdown/Hugo to Quarto

quarto

R

So my old website became too painful to keep updated thanks to version differences across the blogdown and Hugo system I was using, so I’ve migrated it to a Quarto website.…

Two new RStudio themes

code

R

design

Sometimes you see a picture and think to yourself “oh I like the colour composition here”. Well when I think that, I also think “this would make a great RStudio theme”. So…

Reflecting on my PhD experience

academia

self

phd

I submitted my PhD thesis nearly two months ago, and while I still have to wait for examiner feedback to claim that I’ve ‘finished’, I think I’ve sufficiently decompressed…

What did the pig get to help with their dry skin?

joke

Making a custom RStudio theme

R

code

design

This is a re-post of my previous how-to on how to make custom RStudio themes. It unfortunately disappeared by accident as I migrated my site from Hugo/Blogdown to Quarto (it…

The Health of Aboriginal Children in Western Australia in the Context of the Child Protection System

MSPGH PhD Completion Seminar

academia

research

phd

I presented my PhD completion seminar to the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health on the 10th of May, 2024. I’ve included the recording of the seminar here and…

How did the vegetable gardener lower their taxable income?

joke

Celery sacrifice

Going to the ATSIMA 2023 conference

academia

conference

research

The Statistical Society of Australia (SSA) were advertising funding to support a member to attend this year’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mathematics Alliance (ATSI…

A brief introduction to research for health professionals

Research on the Run 2021, Ballarat Health Services

research

consulting

I originally did this talk for Ballarat Health Services (now Grampians Health) back in 2021. I’d intended to upload the recording but unfortunately it didn’t materialise!…

What do you call music composed by apes?

joke

Further reflections on gender identity

self

It’s been quite a few months since I started thinking deeply about my own gender identity and not a week has gone by where I haven’t found myself pondering on it.

RMarkdown is great

research

code

R

The title says it all really. RMarkdown, along with bookdown, has made my life so much easier when it comes to writing up papers and reports. If you’re a non-R user I hope…

Why are cows bad at the tightrope?

joke

Because they lactose

What I Didn’t Learn at University

academia

I presented this talk at the Early Career and Student Statistician’s Conference in 2021. I found that while I learned a lot at university about statistics and data, I didn’t…

Thinking About Gender Identity

self

I thought I would gather my thoughts on my gender identity in this post. Partly for me to keep track of thoughts and feelings I’ve had, and partly in the hopes that it could…

The Health of Aboriginal Children in Western Australia and its Intersection with the Child Protection System

PhD Confirmation Report, May 2021

research

academia

phd

This is the report I prepared for my PhD confirmation on the 31st of May, 2021.

PhD Confirmation Presentation

research

academia

phd

This is the video recording of my PhD confirmation presentation delivered at the Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health…

Basil Pesto

self

This basil pesto recipe is the result of me making pesto innumerable times and tweaking it each time until I got it just right. My goal was to make a pesto that tastes just…

Why was Christmas ruined for the Germans?

joke

Because all their cakes were stollen

Designing a t-shirt

design

statistics

SSA

Back in September 2020 I saw the Statistical Society of Australia (SSA) advertise a t-shirt competition. The competition was only open to members, with the winner of the…

Meet the dogs

self

My happy little family at home consists primarily of noodle horses, or greyhounds as they’re more commonly known. We’ve got two greyhounds - Randy (13) and Cheeky (9). We…