Tag: data

A hat-full of academic how-tos

KatatrepsisLeave a comment

Dipping in and out of the stream of tweets, there are always fascinating links to excellent resources for academics at all stages of their careers. I just spotted another, and thought it might be about time to aggregate some of these for posterity. Here’s the quick list (to which I will add if people suggest links), and details are below

  1. “How to find a postdoc”
  2. “How to get started with R”
  3. “How to use Github and RStudio”
  4. “How to use Github effectively”
  5. “How to respond to reviewers’ comments”
  6. “How to write a literature review”
  7. “How to help fight sexism in academia”
  8. “How to make your publications more accessible”
  9. “How to make your work reproducible”

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Avoiding Attack! (a classroom kit)

Katatrepsis1 Comment

I blogged some time ago about a Cafe Scientifique talk I gave on the topic of “Avoiding Attack” (broadly mimicry and camouflage in animals). I stole the title of the talk wholesale from the excellent book of the same name written by former colleagues Mike Speed and Tom Sherratt along with Graeme Ruxton). After giving that talk, I was asked to contribute to the Leeds Festival of Science – a great initiative where University of Leeds staff engage local people (particularly schools) with their research through on-campus and external events. As part of that event this year I took part in the “schools roadshow” where researchers go out into schools to teach about their work. I thought I would post the resources that I used here with some notes so that teachers can make use of the materials that I produced. Everything here is released on a Creative Commons license (CC-BY 4.0).

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Using R to look at engagement with Twitter at scientific conferences

KatatrepsisLeave a comment

Beh13 presentationI have been busy attending conferences recently (one of many excuses for not updating the blog) and I thought I would mention one significant difference between these conferences and those that I have attended previously.  At Behaviour 2013 (Newcastle, 4-8 Aug 2013 – that’s me talking about mimicry on the right), I tried live-tweeting for the first time.  Then at Intecol 2013 (London, 18-23 Aug 2013) almost all questions during the plenary talks were taken solely by Twitter.  This meant that I had a lot more experience of Twitter in an academic forum that I had had before, and I found it to be an immensely positive experience!  Not only did people come up and say “hi” because they recognised my name from Twitter (new networking opportunities), but I passively participated in multiple parallel sessions where usually I would only have had access to the session within which I was physically present (there were 16 parallel sessions at any one time at Intecol!).Read More »

Leeds Big Data Week (big data for conservation biology)

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I’m excited to be a part of Big Data Week this year. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the phenomenon of big data, IBM has a pretty good definition.  In essence, we are collecting huge amounts of data by virtue of living in a technologically advanced world, and those data are collected rapidly in a diverse range of formats. The challenge now is what to do with all of it! Big Data Week, which is running from 22-28 April 2013, is an international movement that was established in 2011 to connect businesses, data scientists, and technology groups to explore novel social, political, technological and commercial applications of big data.  Leeds Data Thing is my local big data group, formed in 2013 to provide a venue for the discussion of local big data applications.  They are putting on a range of events for BDW 2013, and I have volunteered to give a short presentation at one of those events.

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Sexist skeptics? Here’s how to find out

Katatrepsis14 Comments
Some have said that skeptical conferences have too many older, white men… (photo by Scott Hurst)

There has been an ongoing (and really rather bitter) argument over discrimination against women in the skeptical/atheist community – particularly over whether or not conferences are preferentially selecting old, white, male speakers.  Arguably this could be expanded to include discrimination against youth and against different races, but the sexism issue is that which has been front-and-centre over the past year.  The allegations have been that the organisers of various conferences (particularly TAM) have not been inclusive when considering female speakers and that this has contributed to an unwelcoming environment at skeptical conferences.Read More »