R Markdown: Make your computer do your work for you by Dr Ewan Carr

About the speaker

Dr Ewan Carr joined King’s College London’s Department of Biostatistics and Health Informatics in 2017. Prior to this role, Ewan was based in Epidemiology and Public Health Department at University College London. Ewan holds an MSc in Social Research Methods and Statistics and a PhD in Social Statistics from Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research, University of Manchester. His research interests are in applying novel statistical techniques to longitudinal and routine clinical datasets to better understand heterogeneous treatment effects and to unpick interactions between mental and physical health. Currently, Ewan works on projects related to the Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) theme of Bioinformatics and Statistics. This involves a wide range of analytical methods, including latent variable techniques (CFA, LCA), multilevel modelling, time series SEM, survival analysis, and more recently, machine learning and topological data analysis. He is a keen user of R and Python and has many years of experience with Mplus and Stata. Ewan has taught on a wide range of statistical techniques. At present, he lectures on courses in R, statistical programming, statistical modelling, research methods for multilevel data and support delivery of other modules within the department.

About the talk

R Markdown is one of the most powerful software tools going. Word processing, blogging, powerpoint-style presentations, conferences posters are just a handful of examples of what it can do. Unfortunate, its power and versatility are matched by the calories needed to get to master it. An add-on to R Studio, a workable overlay to R, R Markdown runs on R coding language, and so inherits many of the fiddly, maddening, incomprehensible characteristics of any coding language.