[BlindRUG] Introductions

[Vincent Martin]

Karen,

Let's communicate off list.  I am doing my research into non-visual
representation of Statistical  data.  Our lab deals primarily in the
sonification data.

 

 

 

From: BlindRUG [mailto:blindrug-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Karen.Vines
via BlindRUG
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 10:01 AM
To: Blind R Users Group
Subject: Re: [BlindRUG] Introductions

 

Hi all,

 

I'm Karen Vines and I'm a lecturer in Statistics at The Open University in
the UK. I currently use R in my research but not for teaching. (For teaching
at the moment its either Minitab, SPSS or GenStat depending on which module
I'm dealing with.) Although I've got a reasonable amount of experience of
using R I'm sure there's plenty of ways in which my use of R could improve -
particularly my R programming skills. 

 

One of the things I'm keen on is making my statistics teaching as accessible
as possible - including the use of statistical software. In particular I'm
currently interested in investigating/implementing sonification of
statistical plots. It appears to me that R is a good way forward to achieve
this. 

 

Karen

 

 

From: Godfrey, Jonathan via BlindRUG [mailto:blindrug at nfbnet.org] 
Sent: 05 February 2015 08:22
To: BlindRUG at nfbnet.org
Subject: [BlindRUG] Introductions

 

Hello all,

 

Thank you all for joining the BlindRUG. I look forward to getting to know
how each of you is using R so that I can learn from you and improve my use
of R. I certainly don't profess to know everything about R and the many ways
anyone will use it, but I do think I've got a pretty good handle on how
blind users can use it.

 

I'd like those of you who feel inclined to let the rest of us know who you
are and how much you use R, or want to use R in the future. As list
moderator I can see who is on the list. I know some list members aren't
blind but do have an interest in how blind users will fare. Welcome to you
too. Finally before I share my R history, please do feel free to let anyone
else you know that is using R know about the BlindRUG. The more the merrier.

 

 

I work at Massey University in New Zealand as a Senior Lecturer in
Statistics. To my knowledge, there is only one other blind lecturer in
statistics (Theodor Loots from Pretoria) and I think it's time this changed.
There are a few other blind lecturers that teach statistical topics within
their chosen area of application as well of course.

 

I've been using R for well over eight years now. I migrated to R when the
licence for my SPlus software ran out and other software options were
letting me down. I still used Minitab for teaching until 2009. The only time
I have opened other statistical software since then is to test its
usefulness or to run a program provided by a statistical consulting client
or research collaborator.

 

R is used in all courses I teach beyond first year including a few where I
have ended up being responsible for converting all course material to
incorporate R code and output. In most instances, I have used Sweave so I
didn't need to copy and paste output etc. into my LaTeX files. I have been
using Rmarkdown for the same purposes since mid-2014. I hope we'll talk
about these work practices soon. (This is the way most of the material on
the R-Resources pages is created.)

 

I am maintainer of four packages on CRAN, including the BrailleR package
which is the most relevant to this audience. I'll want to introduce that to
you very soon too. This package has one major purpose - make using R even
easier (efficiency and effectiveness) for blind users.

 

I run R under Windows, but also have a Cygwin installation for testing the
performance of a couple of little tricks for running scripts on Linux
servers used by one of my major clients.

 

I think that's enough for now. Please reply with your own details if you
like.

 

Cheers,

Jonathan

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an
exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC
038302). The Open University is authorised and regulated by the Financial
Conduct Authority. 

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