Hello,
I am a new PhD student at the School of life science, whose research is focussed on doing quantitative analysis (biodiversity models and land-use dynamics). I was wondering how many other early career researchers at the university are in a similar position and if there is general interest in exchanging ideas and skills. The idea would be to establish a so called “user group”. User groups are informal meetings that bring together people who use quantitative analysis techniques in their daily research/work. They already exist all over the globe for the most popular scripting languages such as R ( http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/local-r-groups.html ) or python (https://wiki.python.org/moin/LocalUserGroups ).
Some ideas how such meetings could benefit everyone:
– Mini-workshop on learning certain data manipulation or analysis practices
– Discussion of new techniques / packages and modules /methodological papers
– How can I visualize this information (e.g. Figures, diagram)
– Getting to know other people’s research and facilitation of wider interdisciplinary collaboration
These get-together would be primarily aimed at early career researchers, but more experienced staff members are invited to contribute as well!
What I want to highlight at this point:
These meetings can and should not replace (a) proper statistical consulting and (b) should be self-organizing collaborative endeavours rather than someone’s single responsibility so that ultimately the organization of the meeting is rotating between all members.
I made a short form with some basic questions, if you want to express your interest HERE. At this stage I am just evaluating how many people would theoretically be interested in having something like this and if there are preferences for certain scripting languages (R, Python, … ).
Please forward this call to other departments or people, who could be interested in having something like this. Also please do get in touch with me if you are doing quantitative analysis and would like to help me to kick start such meetings.
Cheers,
—
Martin Jung
PhD research student
School of Life Science
University of Sussex
University of Sussex
Martin’s email is: m.jung@sussex.ac.uk
Sussex Research Hive 