Tutorial: Introduction to Parallel Processing in R

Please join us for a lunchtime R-Ladies meetup with Brittany Barker. Brittany will guide us through a beginner-level tutorial on how and why to use parallel computing in R.

Brittany is a Research Associate (Postdoc) at the Oregon IPM Center at Oregon State University, where she is developing a spatial modeling platform (written in R) that predicts phenology and climate suitability of invasive insect species in real-time. She is broadly interested in how environmental perturbations such as climate change shape the population dynamics and geographical range limits of plant and animal species.

In her demo, she will demonstrate the use and value of the parallel, doParallel, and foreach packages for parallel computing in R. The demo will center on analyzing very large spatial data sets, but parallel processing in R can be used for ANY type of data. She will provide examples of when you may want to use parallel computing for your work, and provide further resources to explore.

This demo will be held over zoom and we will RStudio Cloud so you can follow along with the Brittany's code. We will email out instructions on what to expect and how to get set up.

~~How to follow Brittany’s tutorial:~~

Recommended Option 1: Create a free RStudio Cloud account and join Brittany’s shared workspace using the link below. This will create a copy of Brittany’s R project for you and allow to run her code. The advantage of using RStudio Cloud is that all of the packages you will need are pre-installed and you’ll be working from the same settings as Brittany. This will make it much easier for us to help you if you run into any problems.
https://rstudio.cloud/spaces/119389/join?access_code=412mjNHj6%2BJmLjN24nM8Px6UDtq7qILJh%2B064Io2

Option 2: If you don’t want to use RStudio Cloud, you can clone Brittany’s repo. You will need to install the R packages ahead of time. (Note: you will not be able to run the entire RMD file on your own computer unless you are using a Unix based OS.)
https://github.com/bbarker505/parallel_demo

If you want to watch the presentation and not run the code in real time, that is also fine.

Please reach out if you have any questions (email: seattle@rladies.org).