ManchesterR Meetup! Feb 2026

------ Welcome, Manchester R Users! ------

Welcome to 2026!

We hope you are ready for another great year of coding, learning, and community. We’re excited to kick off 2026 with fresh energy and plenty of R fun ahead!

As before, the event will be brought to you by Datacove. We are a Data and Analytics Consultancy Team based in Brighton, working across Customer Analytics, Shiny and Reporting, Marketing Analytics and Process Automation.

We will be supported by the generous team at DiSH Manchester powered by Barclays Eagle Labs. Hosted by Abbie Brookes and Jeremy Horne from Datacove.

------ Talk Information ------
Speaker: Paul Beard, Actuary at Pacific Life Re.

Talk title: Interpretable Boosted Linear Modelling.

Description: The talk will focus around the package "IBLM" which I authored and was accepted on CRAN. In short, Interpretable Boosted Linear Modelling (IBLM) is a technique for fitting machine learning models in R, that are a hybrid of a conventional generalised linear model (GLM) and a more modern machine learning model (i.e. XGBoost).

------ General Information ------
Now, refreshments! Drinks and pizza will be served from 6pm. Talks will commence at 6:30pm/6:45pm and the event will conclude at 8:30pm.

The conversation will continue after the event at a local pub TBC – obviously!

We look forward to seeing you all again!