The R Data Scientist 02-12-2025
R community news, geospatial mapping, data culture, research methods
🌍 R Community & News
October 2025 Top 40 New CRAN Packages (rworks.dev). R and CRAN: October 2025 top new packages spanning Data to Visualization, featuring AlgeriAPIs, CopernicusClimate, healthmotionR, localLLM, PanelSelect, and Tabler UI Kit
rOpenSci News Digest, November 2025 (ropensci.org). rOpenSci shares November 2025 activities: LatinR partnership, Portuguese Dev Guide translation, Big Team Science talk, posit::conf(2025) recordings, and software peer review updates
Weekly Recap (Nov 26, 2025) (blog.stephenturner.us). Weekly tech recap covering R updates, Claude Opus, Genesis Mission, AI in science, Posit, biotech, and new papers across AI and bio
R Weekly 2025-W49 Custom GPS, testing, Tribal Councils (rweekly.org). Custom GPS routing in R, testing with testthat, and community insights from R Weekly 2025-W49
Posit’s progress and renewed commitment to the Open Source Pledge (posit.co). Posit reaffirms Open Source Pledge with over $750k to open-source, supporting R Markdown, pandoc, and core ecosystems for data science
Grupo de usuarios/as de R (bastianoleah.netlify.app). R users in Chile discuss, learn, and share insights using R in a relaxed, inclusive group setting
nlmixr2 is Becoming an R Consortium Working Group (r-consortium.org). nlmixr2 joins the R Consortium as a Working Group to advance open-source nonlinear mixed-effects modeling in R for regulatory-ready pharmacometrics
🛠️ R Tools & IDEs
How the tables turned (rostrum.blog). Public-sector data science tools: aftables and open-source reuse with R, OpenXML, and CRAN, led by the Analysis Function team
tisthemachinelearner: New Workflow with uv for R Integration of scikit-learn (thierrymoudiki.github.io). tisthemachinelearner integrates uv for seamless R and Python scikit-learn workflow in a lightweight interface
Revisiting Gitballs (nesbitt.io). Explores storing package releases as git objects, deltas, and content-addressing with SWHIDs, referencing Gitballs experiments and Software Heritage
Recibe fotos de gatos o bendiciones automáticamente al abrir RStudio (bastianoleah.netlify.app). Automated cat photos or blessings on RStudio startup using R scripts and rstudioapi
Guides for migrating to Positron (posit.co). Guides explain migrating to Positron from VS Code and RStudio, highlighting features for Python and R, with walkthroughs and migration tips
🗺️ Geospatial & Mapping
Visual summaries of population in Pacific islands (freerangestats.info). R code visuals of Pacific population trends using UN WPP data via the Pacific Data Hub, with tidyverse, rsdmx, and SPC styling
30 Day Map Challenge 2025 (dosull.github.io). Explores mapping Wellington's City to Sea Walkway using R (dplyr, sf, terra), OpenStreetMap, lidar DEMs, and ggplot2
R for Geospatial Predictive Mapping: Takeaways from the Talk (jakubnowosad.com). Geospatial predictive mapping workflows in R; comparing IDW, kriging, and random forests with kNNDM and AoA for domain-aware predictions
Railways (r.iresmi.net). Hexagonal mapping of France’s vanished railways using R, sf, osmdata, ggplot2, and 30DayMapChallenge techniques
Wealth boundaries (r.iresmi.net). Wealth boundaries in Europe shown via GDP per capita by NUTS 2 using R (sf, dplyr, ggplot2) and Eurostat/Natural Earth data
📊 Culture & Sports Data
The Rapidly Increasing Share of NBA Players Born After LeBron's Debut in 2003 (conormclaughlin.net). LeBron's debut cohort fuels a growing generation of players born after 2003, analyzed with hoopR and tidyverse in R
The Böögg Cannot Predict Record Hot Summers (stevenponce.netlify.app). R setup in R with tidyverse; data from tidytuesdayR; analysis of Böögg burn duration and Zurich summer temps
Kids’ June 2025 Streaming Top 10 (stevenponce.netlify.app). Nielsen kids 6–17 June 2025 data analyzed in R with tidyverse, ggplot2, and custom themes by Steven Ponce
📐 Stats & Research Methods
When ecological complex rules are not distinguishable from chance (bartomeuslab.com). Measuring chance in ecology using ELO rankings, null models, and context-dependent competition in RPublication post-mortem (joshuamrosenberg.substack.com). Reflections on scholarly publishing, SAMR, tidyLPA, and TPACK via personal publication post-mortem and lessons learned
First Look at N-P Methods as Severe Tests: Water plant accident [Exhibit (i) from Excursion 3] (errorstatistics.com). N-P severe-testing framework analyzes water plant data using 100-sample X ~ N(μ,1) with μ tests and severity functions
Issue 64: Forecasting with Foundation Models, the Ripper Project, New Tutorials (ramikrispin.substack.com). Forecasting with foundation models, the ripper Quarto extension, and new tutorials for Python, Databricks, and time-series forecasting
👋 Before you go...
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