After teaching a full day of data science during NewsCamp on Thursday, Hadley Wickham on Friday morning presented a brief introduction to data science called “Data science for the perplexed. For everyone.”

Wickham is an Assistant Professor at Rice University and working for RStudio. He describes himself as a statistician by training, and tried to offer some insight into the buzzword that is “data science.” 

He first cited the unofficial and often used description: “a blend of red bull-fueled hacking and espresso-inspired statistics." He also referenced this often-used venn diagram.

Data science isn’t just about hacking with big data ...

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Richard Ben Cramer, a journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 as a foreign correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer, died this week from complications of lung cancer. Cramer's writing career spanned politics and sports, and in addition to the Inquirer his work appeared in magazines such as Esquire and Rolling Stone. Cramer authored several books, including What It Takes: The Way to the White House, an in-depth look at the 1988 presidential election.

This week, IRE pulled a 1991 Esquire story by Richard Ben Cramer from its archives:

George Bush: How He Got Here
"A life of ease ...

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Of all the tools and techniques that have been brought to bear on the pursuit of computer-assisted reporting, few have been more useful, I've found, than regular expressions. Regexes are among the tools I find myself using on an almost daily basis. Although there is a learning curve to be sure, I believe it is worth it. Once you learn the basics of regular expressions, you'll view the hours spent constructing elaborate string functions or embedded if/then statements as quite literally time wasted. So, what are regular expressions? Put simply, it's a specialized language for searching ... Read more ...