First TU Delft R Plot-a-thon inspiring!

From cre­ative data visu­al­i­sa­tions to com­mu­ni­ty build­ing

It’s offi­cial. The first TU Delft R Plot-a-thon has wrapped! A col­lab­o­ra­tion between TU Delft R Café and 4TU.ResearchData, the event chal­lenged a group of enthu­si­as­tic par­tic­i­pants to har­ness their  cre­ativ­i­ty and put their R pro­gram­ming skills to the test. They came up with diverse data visu­al­i­sa­tions, exchanged ideas, and strength­ened con­nec­tions between R users with­in the TU Delft com­mu­ni­ty.  

Grow­ing aware­ness for R

“The TU Delft R Café start­ed about two years ago”, said co-organ­is­er Alek­san­dra Wilczyn­s­ka, Data Solu­tions Engi­neer for the 4TU.ResearchData team. It’s a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple inter­est­ed in the pro­gram­ming lan­guage called R, a ver­sa­tile and pow­er­ful tool for sta­tis­ti­cal com­put­ing and data analy­sis. Accord­ing to Wilczyn­s­ka, many peo­ple at TU Delft work with Python, a more gen­er­al pro­gram­ming lan­guage. They already had an estab­lished com­mu­ni­ty for sup­port, but noth­ing like that exist­ed for R. “We peo­ple that use R togeth­er, meet up and learn from each oth­er.” One of the advan­tages of R is that it’s open source and free so every­body can use it, said Wilczyn­s­ka.

Open data chal­lenge for all lev­els

In addi­tion to month­ly dis­cus­sions on pro­gram­ming relat­ed top­ics, R Café mem­bers came up with the idea of a plot-a-thon as an inclu­sive event for peo­ple with all lev­els of pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence. “It involves some data pro­cess­ing, but it’s rather light­weight com­pared to a hackathon or data-thon,” said Wilczyn­s­ka.  They teamed up with the 4TU.ResearchData Repos­i­to­ry, an open-source plat­form for research data, to cre­ate the first of its kind event. Par­tic­i­pants were giv­en two weeks to cre­ate and sub­mit visu­al­i­sa­tions using R and the sta­tis­tics about data sets host­ed in the repos­i­to­ry. The event cul­mi­nat­ed on Octo­ber 11th when par­tic­i­pants show­cased their plot pre­sen­ta­tions.

Con­tes­tants per­spec­tives

The top prize went to Rodri­go Revil­la Lla­ca, a master’s stu­dent in Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Tech­nol­o­gy. The self-described visu­al­i­sa­tion enthu­si­ast and expe­ri­enced R user said: “This com­pe­ti­tion allows you to put into prac­tice three key aspects of research: data explo­ration, insight gen­er­a­tion, and intu­itive pre­sen­ta­tion. The short dead­line helps you sharp­en your time man­age­ment skills, which is key in real-world research.  Final­ly, see­ing the work done by oth­er con­tes­tants expos­es their cre­ative process, offer­ing valu­able insights, tech­niques, and visu­al inspi­ra­tion for future projects.” In addi­tion to receiv­ing a cash prize, Revil­la Llaca’s visu­al­i­sa­tion will be fea­tured on the 4TU.ResearchData repos­i­to­ry web­site.

Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Urban Design, Claudiu For­gaci, who took sec­ond place, said he could not resist the chal­lenge of explor­ing and visu­al­is­ing a real-world dataset. “I also want to sup­port the growth of the R com­mu­ni­ty at TU Delft, and the best way to do that is by being active and par­tic­i­pat­ing in such events,” he said. “R is a very flex­i­ble pro­gram­ming lan­guage and its amaz­ing visu­al­i­sa­tion pack­ages allow for so much cre­ativ­i­ty.” Final­ly, third place went to PhD can­di­date Yiyuan Zou (Fac­ul­ty of Aero­space Engi­neer­ing) who was famil­iar with R, but said there were still a lot of things he want­ed to learn. “Giv­en the same dataset, I was very glad to see var­i­ous visu­al­i­sa­tions,” said Zou. “If you are a begin­ner or want to start learn­ing R, this is a good chance to start your jour­ney. If you are an expert or soft­ware engi­neer, you may be able to get inspi­ra­tion from oth­er peo­ple’s work . R is flex­i­ble and has much cre­ativ­i­ty in it’s visu­al­i­sa­tion pack­ages”

Build­ing the com­mu­ni­ty

The first edi­tion of the R Plot-a-thon was a great learn­ing expe­ri­ence, accord­ing to Wilczyn­s­ka. “We found out that there are many more R users around TU Delft than we expect­ed, so that was a nice dis­cov­ery,” she said. “It was inter­est­ing that the par­tic­i­pants focussed on many dif­fer­ent things and I was sur­prised by the crafty meth­ods they used to process and analyse the data, but also to gath­er infor­ma­tion from the data.”

Join the R Café

Although there is no con­crete plan for anoth­er plot-a-thon, there are plen­ty of ways for peo­ple to get involved with R Café. “We try to be as inclu­sive as pos­si­ble, so whether you’re just start­ing your jour­ney with R or if you’re more advanced, please join us,” she said. Peo­ple can check the web­site for an agen­da and to sign up for the mail­ing list to receive infor­ma­tion about upcom­ing events. Some dis­cus­sion top­ics have already been select­ed, but the team also wel­comes sug­ges­tions. “I want par­tic­i­pants to be active in cre­at­ing new ses­sions. I think it would be very nice to acti­vate the com­mu­ni­ty and let them decide what top­ics are rel­e­vant and inter­est­ing. The R Caféis as inclu­sive as pos­si­ble: from starters to advanced. Join us!

Want to sug­gest a dis­cus­sion top­ic for the future? Send R Café an email!

By Heather Mon­tague