LA R Users: April Meeting 2021 - Emily Riederer - Column Names as Contracts

LA R Users Group will have our April meeting online on Zoom (https://usc.zoom.us/j/92828963940).

Column Names as Contracts

In this talk, I will explain how controlled vocabularies can be used to form contracts between data producers and data consumers. Explicitly embedding meaning in each component of variable names is a low-tech and low-friction approach which builds a shared understanding of how each field in the dataset is intended to work.
Doing so can offload the burden of data producers by facilitating automated data validation and metadata management. At the same time, data consumers benefit by a reduction in the cognitive load to remember names, a deeper understanding of variable encoding, and opportunities to more efficiently analyze the resulting dataset.
After discussing the theory of controlled vocabulary column-naming and related workflows, I will demonstrate how to implement the creation, upkeep, and application of controlled vocabularies with various softwares, including the R package {convo} and custom SQL templating and testing with dbt.

Bio:
Emily Riederer is a Senior Analytics Manager at Capital One where she leads a team to develop and sustain data products (datamarts, R packages, and dashboards) for business users. Emily blogs at https://emilyriederer.netlify.com/ , is a contributing author to The R Markdown Cookbook (CRC Press) and 97 Things Every Data Engineer Should Know (O’Reilly - forthcoming), and the developer of the R packages projmgr and convo.

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LA R Users Group
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Reach out if you want to be our speaker. First-time speakers are welcome