2020 in Review

meta

Surviving a pandemic at home.

Thomas Mock https://twitter.com/thomas_mock
12-31-2020

My 2020

2020 was absolutely difficult in a lot of ways, both for the world and for me personally. Rather than focusing on some of the difficulties, I’d rather focus on some of the successes for 2020.

I feel very blessed that my family has stayed happy and healthy, to continue being able to grow into expanded roles at RStudio, that I have had a lot of time with my wife Maria and our dog Howard, and that 2020 is now over. Here’s to hopefully efficient vaccine delivery in 2021, and a safer new year to all!

Growth of #TidyTuesday

TidyTuesday has always been a labor of love for me, and the past 3 years have provided me with such a cool view of the R community, and I believe have helped thousands of learners across the world engage with the R community.

If we’re using the raw Tweet data, it looks like 8,601 unique tweets that reference #TidyTuesday along with some key plotting related words.

Code to reproduce 
library(tidyverse)
library(lubridate)
raw_url <- "https://github.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/blob/master/tidytuesday_tweets/data.csv?raw=true"

raw_df <- read_csv(raw_url)

raw_df %>% 
  filter(
    str_detect(tolower(text), "rstats|code|plot|graph|viz|data|tidyverse")
  ) %>% 
  count()

raw_df %>% 
  filter(
    str_detect(tolower(text), "rstats|code|plot|graph|viz|data|tidyverse")
  ) %>% 
  distinct(screen_name) %>% nrow()

sum_df <- raw_df %>% 
  filter(str_detect(tolower(text), "rstats|code|plot|graph|viz|data|tidyverse")) %>% 
  mutate(created_date = lubridate::as_date(created_at),
         year = year(created_date),
         week = week(created_date),
  ) %>% 
  count(year, week) %>% 
  group_by(year) %>% 
  mutate(roll_n = cumsum(n),
         week = if_else(year > 2018, week - 1, week - 14),
         year = factor(year, levels = c(2020, 2019, 2018)),
         colour = case_when(
           year == 2020 ~ "#003399",
           year == 2019 ~ "#FF2B4F",
           year == 2018 ~ "#fcab27",
           TRUE ~ "gray80"
         )
  ) %>% 
  ungroup()

top_weeks <- sum_df %>% 
  group_by(year) %>% 
  arrange(desc(roll_n)) %>% 
  slice(1)

tt_plot <-  ggplot(
  sum_df, 
  aes(x = week, y = roll_n, 
      color = colour, group = year)
) +
  geom_step(size = 1) +
  geom_point(data = top_weeks,
             aes(col = colour), 
             size = 2.5, stroke = 1) +
  geom_text(data = top_weeks,
            aes(label = year),
            size = 8, hjust = c(1, 1, 0), nudge_y = 50,
            vjust = 0) +
  geom_hline(yintercept = 0, size = 1, color = "black") +
  scale_y_continuous(breaks = seq(0, 5000, by = 500),
                     limits = c(0, 5000)) +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = c(seq(0, 50, 5), 52),
                     limits = c(0, 53)) +
  scale_color_identity(aesthetics = c("colour", "fill")) +
  labs(x = "\nWeek Number", y = "Cumulative Tweets\n",
       caption = "Data: rtweet | Plot: @thomas_mock",
       title = "Cumulative tweets for #TidyTuesday by year",
       subtitle = "Note that Week 1 of 2018 started in April\nTweets must contain: 'rstats, code, plot, graph, viz, data or tidyverse'\n")  +
  tomtom::theme_538() +
  theme(legend.position = c(0.1, 0.8),
        legend.background = element_blank(),
        legend.title = element_blank(),
        legend.text = element_text(size = 12),
        plot.background = element_blank(),
        plot.title = element_text(size = 24))

tt_plot

ggsave("tt-plot.png", tt_plot, dpi = "retina")

Re-emphasis on blogging

I had neglected my blog since Jan 2019, but kicked off with a new blog post about simulating optimal strategy for my favorite dice game “10,000”, after seeing some Dave Robinson simulations examples. I have a strong desire to create tutorials/guides so that I can remember things for the future and to help provide some scaffolding for others to learn from as they progress through their data science learning journey.

This really took off in March/April when Texas was heavily in lockdown and I could no longer go out to restaurants or see family. I ended up with a lot of exploration of topics, mostly for the TidyTuesday and the NFL sports analytics communities.

In May, I started a “How to make tables with R” series, mostly focused on gt and reactable.

I also started providing some more general resources on how to use the new tidyr functions to clean up deeply nested JSON, how to use RMarkdown, and some other guides.

By August, I was still stuck inside, so I put together a resource on how to start your OWN blog with distill, and some other guides. Eventually, distill got a HUGE update which I provided some ideas to, although all of the real work was done by Alison Hill and the RMarkdown team.

September kicked off a deeper focus on gt specifically.

In October and November, I spent more time on plotting.

In December, I revisited JSON data and more plotting.

For 2021, I’ll be continuing to blog and create technical guides - tweet at me if there’s something you want to see! [@thomas_mock](https://twitter.com/thomas_mock) .

Conferences and Presentations

I gave some conference talks, mostly invited which I can attribute to being engaged with the community and technical blogging.

useR 2020

I was lucky enough to both attend (virtually) and present at my first ever useR! I focused on the #TidyTuesday project, what it’s all about, and how the community has built around it.

So excited to be sharing what the community has built around #TidyTuesday for #useR2020 !

“TidyTuesday: Scaffolding for a Community of Practice”https://t.co/NK3PKMACde

Slides: https://t.co/PAs1uruopZ#rstats

— Tom Mock (@thomas_mock) July 8, 2020

NYC R

Got to attend and present at my first NYC R conference, focused on doing more with RMarkdown!

Really excited to talk about #rstats + RMarkdown for #rstatsnyc in about an hr!

Slides at: https://t.co/AYSprYoK9d if you want to follow along or maybe live tweet!

Companion blog post: https://t.co/a6DbT0AA6c pic.twitter.com/5SQfrHjFim

— Tom Mock (@thomas_mock) August 15, 2020

Hockey Analytics Night in Canada: NFL Edition

I was honored to be invited to and present at HANICx NFL, and after running a poll decided to present on the most requested topic: tidymodels!

NHS R Conference

Gave an adapted version of my RMarkdown presentation for the NHS R community, enjoyed the chatter in the live groups there!

Really enjoyed giving my presentation on Marvelous RMarkdown for the #NHSRconf2020 w/ #RStats !

Slides: https://t.co/AYSprYoK9d
Companion Blogpost: https://t.co/a6DbT0AA6c
RMarkdown Cookbook: https://t.co/Ce43CUlPBg

— Tom Mock (@thomas_mock) November 12, 2020

Carnegie Mellon Sports Analytics Conference

Gave my first public workshop for the CMSAC team, big thanks to Ron Yorko for the invite! I’ve always wanted to attend this conference and was deeply honored to join as a workshop presenter.

Tables Presentation

Gave a 60 min presentation on “Beautiful Tables in R”

Personal

I survived, along with my very patient wife Maria, and our dog Howard!

I’m looking forward to some rest, and then a refresh for 2021!

Blessings to you and yours, and happy New Year!

Citation

For attribution, please cite this work as

Mock (2020, Dec. 31). The Mockup Blog: 2020 in Review. Retrieved from https://themockup.blog/posts/2020-12-31-2020-in-review/

BibTeX citation

@misc{mock20202020,
  author = {Mock, Thomas},
  title = {The Mockup Blog: 2020 in Review},
  url = {https://themockup.blog/posts/2020-12-31-2020-in-review/},
  year = {2020}
}