Version 0.2.2 of the {NHSRplotthedots} package has today been accepted by CRAN. I have taken over the baton as maintainer, and I'm looking forward to helping more NHS data analysts produce XmR plots of their data, quickly and without fuss. nhsrplotthedots.nhsrcommunity.com

If now that #TDF2025 has ended you don't feel your summer has yet included enough 'people doing impossible things on bikes' then may I recommended the 4000km unsupppored nonstop #TCRno11 from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, which started last night...

I set out some personal goals for 2025 and have just completed a review of progress at Q2.

TL;DR: Nailing the cycling. Need to get back on the books and get the research complete.

andy-callow.medium.com/personal-goa...

Thanks this is really helpful. I had followed links but not recognised the significance of the gcc-ASAN one. I think the C++ code puts this out of my reach, but it is a learning opportunity! I agree it does look like the maintainer has moved on to other things. Thank you!

Hi, thanks - I just checked rio out but unfortunately it doesn't support xlsb. The recommended workflow of manually re-saving as xlsx in excel won't work for me because I'm batch-processing about 100 separate files. I'm thankful the readxlsb code is still available on github!

Do any #rstats folks know how I can find why {readxlsb} was removed from CRAN? I've forked the github repo, but we use the code at work to read finance spreadsheets over which I have no file format control. Interested in what would be needed to get it back onto CRAN

This applies to the NHS too. Improvement can only be delivered to patients by the front line. It's the reason I choose to work and make a difference in a provider trust, not anywhere more remote from patients.

I wrote a history of recent AI development in 32 images of otters using wifi on airplanes, from images to video to code.

It shows two big trends: rapid improvements in AI models of all types and the growth of open weights AI models. www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-recent...

The ragnar R package helps you build RAG systems for document information retrieval. You'll need API access to an LLM and an API to make embeddings. Still unfortunately difficult in the NHS, but it will become possible as orgs find and share the news of benefit in specific use-cases.
#databs #nhs

I wish every team published a doc like Free Agent did for why they chose the tool they did. Of course I am glad they chose Dagster+, but I think this kind of clear-eyed proof of concept criteria can help teams choose the right tool for their team:

#dataBS

engineering.freeagent.com/2025/05/29/d...

I can't read the article, but hopefully they mentioned the improvement context too. I wonder what those in the 1950s would think if we told them that pit stops in 2025 are routinely done in 2 to 3 seconds, not minutes. youtu.be/n_esmAYxE40?...

An exceptional new @nejm.org review on cancer of unknown origin
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Can you spot
What this chart has got
That modern poems have not?
www.economist.com/culture/2025...

A thread about using AI to summarise documents; but it could really be about almost any use of AI.

Right now - in healthcare for example - it's a great timesaver for people who don't *need* it, and potentially troublesome for those who may try to use it outside their existing expertise.

I'm busy reviewing a large number of applications for a position in my team. I'm reflecting on the huge amount of human experience and expertise that is embedded in the applications. Pretty humbling.

Thanks to everybody who chimed in!

I arrived at the conclusion that (1) there's a lot of interesting stuff about interactions and (2) the figure I was looking for does not exist.

So, I made it myself! Here's a simple illustration of how to control for confounding in interactions:>

🎯 Level up your R functions! Discover best practices for returning multiple values - from simple vectors to structured outputs. Perfect for data pipeline development.

🔗 www.spsanderson.com/steveondata/...

#rstats #Rprog #Rcode #DataSci #R4ds #blog #function #RProgramming

Git was 20 years old this week. Written by the creator of Linux as a tool to streamline his workflow - it shows the importance of making tools. If you have a better way of doing something, write and share it. It's possible that few others understand the problem, let alone have the solution you do!

#TodayinHistory #dataviz #Onthisday #OTD 📊
💀May 3, 2010 Jacques Bertin died in Paris, France 🇫🇷

In 1967 his Semiology of Graphics became the first
comprehensive theory of graphical symbols and modes of graphics representation --> Grammar of Graphics

Good advice. "Customer first" cuts across almost every domain. I think Adam Wathan called this "programming by wishful thinking" in one of his TDD talks, and that language has always stuck with me.

I really enjoyed chatting with Karin about bridging R and Python. This post is a deep dive into reticulate, rpy2, and what great interoperability really looks like.
#rstats #python

🧪

Here it is with real data! A map of 550,000 foreign aid projects in just a few lines of #rstats code