Introducing Code Horizons

By Stephen Vaisey

We are thrilled to introduce a new addition to the Statistical Horizons family — Code Horizons. This new initiative emerges from a simple realization. When we do our research, most of the things we actually do are not things we learned in graduate school. These include writing scripts to parse textual data, creating effective visualizations, making reproducible reports so that others can use our code and replicate our results, creating HTML5 slideshows and websites, and learning new languages like R or Python. More than ever, proficiency at “coding” (broadly defined) has become an essential element of research productivity in science and industry.

Personally, these are skills that I have had to learn largely on my own. Unfortunately, this usually involved a ton of painful trial and error, false starts, and dead ends. Wouldn’t it be great if that pain could be reduced, or even eliminated?

Our goal at Code Horizons is to help you get up to speed quickly on these vital skills so you can keep your focus where it belongs — doing your research.

We are just getting started, and we plan to offer many courses in the coming months and years. For now, we will be launching with two new courses — Introduction to Python for Data Analysis and Workflow of Data Analysis (featuring both R and Stata). We will also continue to offer such essential courses as Data Visualization Using R, Introduction to Text as Data, and Introduction to R for Data Analysis. Our aim is to help you learn the skills you need in an efficient and affordable way in order to rapidly increase your productivity. 

As Director of Code Horizons, I am really excited about these new courses, and I will be attending them myself. Watch this space for more developments in the coming months!