Welcome
Welcome to my site.
I’m an NHS data analyst / BI developer based in Scotland.
This blog is mainly about R - an open source statistical programming language.
Why R?
Because I like it, there is a lot to learn, and there are plenty of SQL and Excel blogs out there already. Occasionally I write about other tools, and might pivot to new things in the future. But R is what I find myself wanting to use in my spare time.
rockthemes
An R colour palette package inspired by classic rock album covers. Continue reading rockthemes
runcharter
An R package for quality improvement analysis, now available on CRAN. Continue reading runcharter
See Projects for more
Why should I listen to you?
Because I’ll help you learn.
Mainly R, but also SQL, Excel, Statistical Process Control, BI…
I know what it is to struggle to understand something, and how good it feels when you finally get it, and can move on with your work.
I am always delighted to hear that my posts are helping others.
I am told that I’m good at simplifying and explaining things - I think that is a useful quality.
I am self taught - I don’t have a background in computing or statistics, so if I can do this, you can too.
simpler SQL with dplyr
comparing dplyr with SQL nested queries - and there is only one winner Continue reading simpler SQL with dplyr
The hourly heatmap with ggplot2
How I made the 24/7 heatmap from my previous post with ggplot2, dplyr and lubridate Continue reading The hourly heatmap with ggplot2
demystifying the coalesce function
coalesce is a one of those functions that might not strike you as being very useful, mainly because it doesn’t sound very exciting. But it IS useful, and might save you some time and complexity Continue reading demystifying the coalesce function
Well Well Well my Excel
I’m fed up forgetting how to combine lots of excel workbooks into one dataframe, so I’m documenting several ways of doing it, using purrr, data.table, rio and base R. Continue reading Well Well Well my Excel
Mapping to a 't'(map)
the tmap package <- beautiful static and interactive maps with R Continue reading Mapping to a 't'(map)
Let it flow, let it flow, let it flow......
Animating dot plots to demonstrate patient flow Continue reading Let it flow, let it flow, let it flow......
See HighlandR for more
Presentations , talks and workshops
In addition to writing some popular posts, I have developed packages, presented at conferences and led practical workshops, mostly as a result of this blog:
2020 - NHS-R Conference My data.table hat trick
2020 - R Medicine - Rapid Analysis and Presentation of Quality Improvement Data with R
2018 - NHS R Conference – Birmingham
2018 - APHA Scotland Data Transitions – Visualising and animating patient flow
2017 - Qlik Healthcare Dev Group September Gathering – SPC Charts
2014 – Scottish Patient Safety National Event – Falls Reporting
2013 – Scottish Patient Safety National Event – Measurement of Falls Rates
2012 National Falls Event, Glasgow - Introduction to Run Charts and Statistical Process Control
R Skills demonstrated in this blog
- tidyverse
- data.table
- data wrangling and manipulation
- data visualisation
- text mining and sentiment analysis
- package development
- programming
- mapping / spatial data
- ability to use a diverse range of packages and techniques
