Ben Harrap
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bharrap.bsky.social
Ben Harrap
@bharrap.bsky.social
2.2K followers 780 following 1K posts
doer of data things at Yardhura Walani
vice president of statsoc.org.au
I do #rstats, surveys, biostatistics, #IDSov
on Ngunnawal and Ngambri lands
not Indigenous, non-binary (they/them)
benharrap.com
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bharrap.bsky.social
How it feels picking an #rstats package to make tables
a scene from "the breakfast club" with r package hexes superimposed on the five characters from left to right: the delinquent is a plain-text markdown table the jock is the janitor package the loner is the tinytable package the popular girl is the knitr package the nerd is the gt package the jock is the 'janitor' package, the
February 16, 2026 at 10:32 PM
bharrap.bsky.social
Sunday roast time 🤤
A tray of roast chicken, pumpkin, mushroom, carrots and broccoli, alongside another tray of roast potatoes and Yorkshire puds and a tray of roast corn
February 15, 2026 at 6:13 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
Look I'm not going to open a cake decorating business any time soon but I think there's enough whimsy here for a 3-year old's birthday party
A birthday cake comprised of a train and two carriages. Each is iced in a different colour and covered in chocolate and lollies
January 30, 2026 at 11:39 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
Here I am writing #rstats functions for my colleagues to extract results from Stata log files for Quarto reporting

Little do they know Quarto is the gateway to R, I'll have them hooked in no time!
A stock image of a drug dealer holding his coat open, but the logos for quarto and R are superimposed on the drugs
January 23, 2026 at 9:56 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
Breakfast time for the Galahs on our bird TV this morning
To Galahs sitting in a tree eating berries
January 19, 2026 at 8:19 PM
bharrap.bsky.social
I guess I'm posting things on tiktok now vt.tiktok.com/ZSaLm4PbB/
January 19, 2026 at 9:46 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
Coming in at $32/200g these Colombian beans are the most expensive so far but the flavour profile is insane

Maybe I get the cherry notes on the after-taste but the initial flavour isn't like any other coffee I've had

4/4 already but the grind needs adjusting
A box of Sweven coffee held next to a green cup filled with espresso Cata project Huila, Colombia Advanced natural bourbon rojo Maraschinos, grape soda, banoffee pie Roasted for espresso
January 18, 2026 at 9:13 PM
bharrap.bsky.social
I'm impressed I was so consistent with myself! I for sure thought I'd be inconsistent somewhere

Also I'm keen to see an analysis of the data - I did a bunch of reading on this area to inform some recommendations around probability number -> wording

This area is so interesting!
A summary of my performance on the survey. I was in the middle of the pack in terms of probability assignment and 100% consistent with my word comparisons versus numerical assignment
January 12, 2026 at 9:35 PM
bharrap.bsky.social
Getting ready for Christmas lunch

Step 1, milk buns
A tray of freshly baked, golden-brown milk buns
December 24, 2025 at 3:37 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
I have enormous respect for people who write compilers and maintain software

Internet held together by duct tape yadda yadda #rstats #databs
A screenshot of text Computations involving ‘NaN’ will return ‘NaN’ or perhaps ‘NA’: which of those two is not guaranteed and may depend on the R platform (since compilers may re-order computations). Numerical computations using ‘NA’ will normally result in ‘NA’: a possible exception is where ‘NaN’ is also involved, in which case either might result (which may depend on the R platform). However, this is not guaranteed and future CPUs and/or compilers may behave differently.
December 19, 2025 at 8:34 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
Natural process Ethiopian coffee has always been my favourite and these beans from Market Lane are unbelievably tasty

So good I almost want to change my rating scale to include an extra category
A bag of coffee beans called Werka
December 19, 2025 at 2:09 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
I know unseasoned chicken breast is very White People coded but the maillard reaction is an incredible thing
Cooked chicken breast with a golden crust
December 18, 2025 at 6:51 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
The Royal Exhibition building does alright
The decorative interior and dome of the royal exhibition building
December 11, 2025 at 2:34 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
It feels like a long time coming, but graduation time is finally here 🎉🎓
It's me, wearing a floppy black phd hat with red tassels, and a black gown with cherry trim
December 11, 2025 at 2:10 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
Voting begins for the #OceaniaR hackathon

Looking forward to some #rstats nerdery on this Sunday 🤓
A room of people sitting at tables looking at a projection of github issues
November 22, 2025 at 10:41 PM
bharrap.bsky.social
Maybe in a few promotions' time 🥲
Two panel meme of a excited then disappointed guy. Excited panel reads "the license plate YMDHMS is available" Disappointed panel reads "it's $3600"
November 10, 2025 at 10:03 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
I've been wearing band shirts for years but today is the first time someone's thrown up the evil eye/devil horns

Rock on Bunnings dude 🤘
A black t-shirt with the word 'emperor' and a stylised image of a death wielding a scythe atop a horse
November 6, 2025 at 2:26 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
I've made a new RStudio theme based on these nice logs. Enjoy #rstats!

benharrap.com/post/2025-10...
Logs cut from a gum tree. They have silvery bark and wood with an orangey hue A preview of R code with a colour palette based on gum logs
October 31, 2025 at 12:02 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
TBH the only use of this domain name should be to display images of pet turtles wielding sai
raphael, one of the teenage mutant ninja turtles, wielding two sai
October 12, 2025 at 11:58 PM
bharrap.bsky.social
Great pointer from @nrennie.bsky.social on making data visualisations

We as makers spend hours with the data and creating the visualisation, but we need to consider those who are looking for 5 seconds

#WOMBAT2025 #dataviz
A slide about accurate visualisations asking Is the chart appropriate Are the axis ranges reasonable Is it intuitive Is the 5 second conclusion the same as the 5 minute conclusion
September 29, 2025 at 11:11 PM
bharrap.bsky.social
In my most spectacular kitchen fail to date, I forgot I undid the lid on the passata and proceeded give it a big shake...

I couldn't help but laugh and show my toddler the sheer mess I just made

🙈🙈🙈
A kitchen benchtop and chopping board splattered with passata
September 27, 2025 at 9:30 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
My favourite bush, pink diosma
An Australian native bush in bloom with cute little pink flowers
September 25, 2025 at 8:45 PM
bharrap.bsky.social
Time for the SSA ACT branch monthly(ish) talk on tobacco control

Grace has many publications on Tobacco control - check out her ANU profile:

researchportalplus.anu.edu.au/en/persons/g...

#statssky #episky
The title slide from a presentation. It reads "smoking guns - generating evidence to inform tobacco control. Associate professor Grace Joshy"
August 26, 2025 at 7:55 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
Gotta christen the new house with maybe too much pancetta @elyobo.bsky.social
Diced pancetta slowly rendering in a pot
August 17, 2025 at 7:08 AM
bharrap.bsky.social
lmao would recommend
A response from the Claude LLM after being instructed to respond like an aggressive New Yorker: Alright, alright, you want a function that strips ALL the whitespace, including those sneaky unicode characters? No problem, I got you covered. Here ya go - this'll handle everything from your basic spaces to those weird unicode whitespace characters that like to hide in your data: There ya have it! I gave you THREE versions because I'm thorough like that: Basic version - Uses \\s+ which catches 99% of whitespace including unicode. The perl = TRUE makes sure it handles unicode properly. Stringr version - Same thing but uses stringr if you're one of those tidyverse people. Comprehensive version - This bad boy explicitly targets specific unicode whitespace characters that sometimes slip through. I'm talking non-breaking spaces, em spaces, figure spaces - the whole gang. The \\s+ pattern is your friend here - it matches ANY whitespace character (spaces, tabs, newlines, unicode whitespace) and the + means it'll grab consecutive whitespace characters all at once. Just paste whichever version works for your situation and boom - no more whitespace problems. You need anything else or we good here?
July 31, 2025 at 10:58 PM