RUG CPT Meetup and Talk

There will be refreshments and networking from 18h00.
Agenda
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* Meeting start at 16h30
* Aidan Horn will give a talk/workshop on integration between Google Sheets and R
* Meeting finish at 18h00

About the workshop
The googlesheets4 R package enables one to write a tibble to a Google Sheet, or read a table from a Google Sheet. It can be a public Google Sheet, or alternatively the package facilitates a very user-friendly process of signing in to your Google account, whereby it stores a token behind the scenes. In our workshop, we will begin by reading and writing from public and private Google Sheets in R.

Once we have that waxed, Aidan can show you how to enable automation of this process, rather than a human signing in. In order to do this, we need to create a service account in the Google Cloud Platform, download a .json credentials file, and point an R environment variable to the location of the .json credentials file. The gs4_auth() function can then use the R environment variable to authorize the service account. The address of the service account needs to be added to the Google Sheet as an editor. The R script can then be ready to be added to a schedule or a server.

About the presenter

Aidan Horn ( https://lnk.bio/aidanhorn ) has studied a BSocSci (Economics, Maths and Public Policy) at the University of Cape Town, followed by an Honours and Masters in Economics at UCT, in the Commerce faculty. He then worked as a Junior Researcher at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) in the School of Economics, for a few years, before branching more into the private sector around 2022, shifting gradually away from economic policy advice towards computer programming. He has worked at Codera Analytics since April 2023, which is a small economics data analytics company, which predominantly uses R.

Codera engineers economic data, mostly from public sources where the supply is not structured or provided with an API. This means that Codera often adds value by turning Excel files into structured data, providing the data through their EconData platform, which is rich in metadata. About half of the data in EconData is publicly accessible, once a new user registers, and available in an automatable fashion through the R package: remotes::install_github("coderaanalytics/econdatar").

Details
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When: 11th March 2025 @ 16h30 to 18h00 (GMT+2)
Where: Room 6.49 PD Hahn Building, North Lane, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Location: https://maps.app.goo.gl/b4Mc32AshaBir5MH7
This meetup will be in collaboration with RUG Joburg