6th amst-R-dam meetup

Hi folks,

We will kick off 2012 with two great talks lined up for our next meet-up.

First talk will be on data visualization in R using ggplot2 with Paul Hiemstra. Paul works with statistics, meteorology and data assimilation and is a consultant and trainer (http://www.numbertheory.nl/).

Abstract: One of the great strengths of R is visualizing both data and results of analyses. To achieve this goal, a great many possible packages are available in R. The main options are the standard plotting options in R, the lattice package and the ggplot2 package. In this presentation I will focus on the ggplot2 package. I will show the basic syntax of how to make plots and go into the philosophy behind the package. At the end of the presentation I hope that you will share (some of) the enthusiasm that I have for this particular R package.

Next, Sven Gastauer will give a talk on two subjects; first he will talk about Rapache and the fisherman and thereafter give you an overview of R applications in the world of fisheries sciences. Sven’s main work consists in doing acoustic stock assessment surveys (herring and blue whiting), ecosystem studies and experimental acoustic work, as pure research or in cooperation with the industry.

Sven’s first talk: Rapache is a server side module; it can be installed on every apache server, allowing the server to understand R. Scripts can be called from within every page, which leads to possibilities of real time online analysis, including the production of graphs and reports.

Such a site was launched last year as a pilot project with a Dutch fisherman. He wanted to see if his theories about why he catches more fish in some areas while in others he was not correct. His catch data and position was automatically uploaded to a database and correlated with environmental parameters such as temperature, salinity, currents and bottom sediment type. The product showed him a real time analysis of his catch data and correlations with the different environmental parameters.

Sven’s second talk: Currently I am working as a fisheries acoustician at IMARES (IJmuiden). At the institute we are using R quite extensively, from general analysis, to server scraping, over geo statistics and bayesian analysis. I want to give you an overview of R applications in the world of fisheries science.

Looking forward to continuing our momentum of wonderful talks and seeing you folks at the meeting.
Cheers, Rahul + Werner + Øyvind