About

Why write about R?

Because I like it, there is a lot to learn, and there are plenty of SQL and Excel blogs out there already.

Why should I listen to you?

Because I’ll help you understand, and learn.

I am always delighted to hear that my posts are helping others.

I am told that I’m good at simplifying and explaining things - I think that is a useful quality.

I am self taught - I don’t have a background in computing or statistics, so if I can do this, you can too.

Background

Excel

I was an Excel power user - automating tasks, creating dashboards and reports, the usual stuff. I developed a data collection system using VBA and user-forms that ran for well over a decade until it was eventually replaced. I was frequently called an “excel guru”, “excel ninja” or, “that annoying guy who does everything in Excel”.

SQL

Some time around 2011, I was told my data collection requirements were too large, and I needed to learn SQL. So I learned SQL - more specifically, SQL Server, SQL Server Integration Services, and SQL Server Reporting Services. Eventually I wrote an introductory SQL Server course for an online training platform that had over 100K students during my time on the platform.

R

The letter that changed my life, for better or worse.
I began using R around 2012, having run into one too many niggles with an Excel dashboard that would display in an inconsistent format depending on some user settings.
I wanted consistent graphics, and lots of them - and after trawling the internet, the answer was ggplot2.
I then began slowly adopting it and learning more as I went along.

Qlik

I worked with Qlik between 2016-2020. As part of my support of a national Patient Safety Programme, I built a Falls dashboard , showning falls counts and rates from Board to ward level, and every reporting layer in between. This featured run charts and process control charts, with the aim of reducing falls and falls resulting in harm by 25%.

Upon request of the Board Nurse Director, I had to figure out a way to get Qlikview to automatically revise run chart medians and control chart limits whenever an improvement had been noted. This meant getting deep into the weeds of Qlik’s functionality, and eventually, writing the largest nested if statement of my career. In addition, I figured out how to create regular control charts without automatic rebasing. Through social media / good timing, my work got spotted by someone at Qlik and I ended up presenting my work to Qlikview’s Healthcare Developer network. That presentation is on Qlik’s Healthcare Youtube Channel. I can’t actually watch it back - I was very nervous, but apparently it was very popular. (In the longer run it sparked interest in a third party Qlik Sense add-on that makes creating control charts easier).

Other tech

I’ve done some limited work with PowerBI. I completed a fantatic course from Maven Analytics in my own time during Christmas 2020/2021.
A few weeks later, with no formal training, I had to build the first iteration of our internal Vaccination Dashboard using PowerBI. This was used by pharmacy colleagues to plan stock requirements for future vaccination cohorts, and to track status across the board.

Julia - initial dabbling, and associated blog post

Python - I’ve dabbled creating little games for my children, but have not yet used it for data science.

Feedback

Please do get in touch if you have any comments - I really appreciate hearing from readers and feedback provides encouragement to keep going.

Email: johnmackintosh dot jm at gmail dot com

LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mackintosh-inv

Mastodon : @johnmackintosh