Title: Teaching Modern Statistics and Data Science with R/ RStudio
Speaker: Nicholas Horton, Amherst College

Nicholas Horton is Professor of Statistics at Amherst College, with methodologic research interests in longitudinal regression models, missing data methods, and statistical computing.  He graduated from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in 1999.  Nick has received the ASA's Founders Award, the Waller Education Award, the William Warde Mu Sigma Rho Education Award, and the MAA Hogg Award for Excellence in Teaching.  He has published more than 160 papers, co-authored a series of four books on statistical computing and data science, and was co-PI on the NSF funded MOSAIC project.  Nick is a Fellow of the ASA, served as a member of the ASA Board, chairs the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies and is the past-chair of the ASA Section on Statistical Education.  He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics and two Academy studies on undergraduate data science education.
 

Workshop description:
R is a freely available language and environment for statistical computing and graphics that has become popular in academia and industry. This workshop will introduce participants to teaching applied statistics and data science courses using computing in an integrated way. The presenter has been using R/ RStudio to teach statistics and data science to undergraduates at all levels for the last decade and will share his approach and favorite examples. Topics will include workflow in the RStudio environment, providing novices with a powerful but manageable set of tools, data wrangling, data visualization, and basic statistical modeling using R.  Much of this "Less Volume, More Creativity" approach will be facilitated using the mosaic package. The workshop is designed to be accessible to those with little or no experience with R and is intended to provide participants with skills, examples, and resources that they can use in their own teaching.  Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop or tablet.