iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Simon Smart

Stats For Bios @statsforbios.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Preprint shinyapp by @simonsmart.bsky.social here. User-friendly, reproducible software for high-resolution predictions from aggregate polygon case counts (or other data). Once you're done, click a button to get a Rmd file out. #RStats #DiseaseMapping #malaria www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I like the backticks as it makes the options immediately distinguishable from the explanatory text and to me this is valid R code. Including the quotes makes it easier to copy and paste and is what the user needs to provide. So it seems as if C is “correct”, but if so why do tidyverse use B? 3/3

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Then I inherited code with option C and checked the tidyverse style guide which says “Text that contains valid R code should be marked as such using backticks” style.tidyverse.org/documentatio... but then looking at various docs in the tidyverse, they use option B. github.com/tidyverse/ti... 2/3

style.tidyverse.org

7 Documentation – Tidyverse style guide

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

#rstats When you have a choice of characters as a parameter to a function, how should the choices be formatted in the docs? I have previously used option A without ever checking what the "correct" way is. 1/3

3 options for formatting:

character. Outcome type for the dataset. Either `binary` or `continuous`.
character. Outcome type for the dataset. Either "binary" or "continuous".
character. Outcome type for the dataset. Either `"binary"` or `"continuous"`.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

It's not ready yet but quarto-hub.com see some of the comments in www.reddit.com/r/rstats/com...

quarto-hub.com

Quarto Hub

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Oh completely. But it's understandable that the committee would have put themselves in a very awkward position by questioning the claims. LJMU should have stepped in and postponed it until he recovered but presumably he wanted to go ahead.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

He claims to have had a brain tumour removed two weeks before his viva and then had a stroke causing him to lose his memory. Presumably the committee took this into account and did not scrutinise sufficiently.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Disappointed to see you publishing this when there is zero published information to support these wild and biologically implausible claims of massive yield increases. I looked at their website and the trials are tiny, unreplicated and unrandomised - that's not science!

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

I haven't but see no reason not to. The main limitation is slow load times, particularly if your app uses lots of packages. What do you mean by "the processing takes FOREVER" though? That doesn't sound like something that would be improved by shinylive and could be worse than deploying on a server

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

If you want to learn more, try out the deployed version at crsu.shinyapps.io/MetaInsight_... or read the vignette at apps.crsu.org.uk/MetaInsight/... and the talk I gave last month at RMedicine is up on YouTube: youtu.be/uMLz5sb6Qlg 5/5

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

As a side-effect we also created a way to conduct a variety of NMAs through a simple API without using the app. Once the data is configured, you can generate some outputs or pass the data to a model function and use the result to generate more outputs. 4/5

configured_data <- setup_load("my_data.csv", outcome = "continuous") |>
setup_configure(reference_treatment = "Placebo",
effects = "random",
outcome_measure = "MD",
ranking_option = "good",
seed = 123)
freq_forest(configured_data) |>
write_plot("frequentist_forest_plot.pdf")

bayes_model(configured_data) |>
bayes_forest() |>
write_plot("bayesian_forest_plot.pdf")

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

We also added the ability to upload and visualise risk of bias data, a new interactive plot for excluding studies from sensitivity analyses and exporting results into CINeMA cinema.med.auth.gr 3/5

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

It was already one of the most impactful academic shiny apps with > 400 citations, but this update makes it reproducible using {shinyscholar}. Whatever you do in the app, you can download a Quarto document that reproduces every step or render it to produce an html report. 2/5

Example Quarto and html reports produced by the app

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Metainsight is now available on CRAN! cran.r-project.org/package=meta... It is a shiny app for conducting network meta-analysis, which in simple terms, is used by doctors to decide which of multiple treatments is best to treat your ailments. #rstats #metaanalysis #openscience 1/5

A screenshot of the app running show options in the sidebar and two forest plots displayed side by side

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Oh my! How is that even going to be slightly enforceable when you don't need an account to watch YouTube, or will the law put a stop to that?! Or is it only apps that are verboten?

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

They can just chat with AI instead. And then vibe code a new social media app that isn't yet banned.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Saturday meetings aren't great but can't get a much better venue to chat about #rstats

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Yep. It's still not great though as it undervalues all the work that goes into producing food to the consumer.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Yes to the first part, but no vegetable farming in the UK is subsidised. I'd argue it should be as it's in real danger of disappearing.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

If it's sold at 17p they're making a loss and taking the hit but the growers get paid the same. Sure they should be paid more but these deals are a red herring. In the short term at least it's good for growers as low prices = increased demand.

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Reposted by Simon Smart

Peter Coles 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ 🇮🇪 @telescoper.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Whichever of the purple dots you look at turns more purple.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Deepwiki is awesome! So helpful for getting your head around a repo and for copying or adjusting functionality

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

I’m giving a seminar on 20th April about refactoring crsu.shinyapps.io/MetaInsight/ to use {shinyscholar}, producing crsu.shinyapps.io/MetaInsight_... Details and sign up: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/crsu-webin... A shorter version is also coming to R/Medicine in May #rstats #metaanalysis #openscience

Poster for the seminar: MetaInsight v7: Making a comprehensive app for network meta analysis reproducible

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Ah yes bsky.app/hashtag/rstats is still fine.

bsky.app

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Thanks for breaking #rstats with your spam @energtx.bsky.social. Even after muting you, there are no older posts.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Partial matching of names in #rstats is wild. I knew the function would run, but didn't know it "works" with dataframes as well!

$f <- function(very_fast, incredibly_dangerous){ data.frame("very_fast" = very_fast, "incredibly_dangerous" = incredibly_dangerous) } df <- f(v = 1, i = 2) df$very * df$inc df$very_broken <- 3 df$very * df$inc$

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

I guess there are some good / historical reasons for this, but it's not an ideal situation and doesn't encourage developers to write tests.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

When submitting #Rstats packages to CRAN you can either: spend weeks writing a comprehensive test suite and get threatened with removal when one don't pass under some unusual condition, OR don't write any tests, R CMD check still passes, most users are none the wiser and you won't be threatened.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

I can't find the exact versions but this might be useful: ropensci.org/blog/2026/01... R-hub has three versions of mac but not exactly corresponding r-hub.github.io/rhub/ (I don't understand why it's so hard to test on machines that match what CRAN use)

ropensci.org

Testing the R-universe build workflow from your own GitHub repository

We refactored the R-universe CI workflows to make it possible to run the exact same workflow from your own GitHub repository.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

thanks - I will give it a go.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

It's surprising that neither R CMD INSTALL nor R CMD check flag having two identically named functions in an #rstats package. It's easy to accidentally duplicate when refactoring code and can lead to much confusion!

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

There's a version from last year on archive.org which looks similar. "You do not need to be registered with any statistical organisation to come." suggests it isn't RSS any more.

archive.org

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Not sure if that's the same thing?

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Is there a term for figuring something out that LLMs say isn't possible? Grind coding? Organic coding? In this case, rendering <text> elements in an SVG to <path> in #Rstats. (Claude cooked up a whole non-functioning package in an attempt to do it).

'<svg><text x="0" y="200"
style="font-size: 100px;">
Hello world</text></svg>' |>
charToRaw() |>
rsvg::rsvg_svg(NULL) |>
rawToChar()

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

That doesn't sound like too much data for leaflet to handle. I noticed your time column is chr rather than a date/time which might be causing problems - maybe some are formatted differently? It's probably worth trying to convert with that column with as.Date() as a first try.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

(which is what lazydata loads)

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Confusingly that package put the data in "cancer.rda" which seems to be what data() references, but that file evidently contains the data in a variable called rotterdam.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

I've spent a lot of time wrestling with base #rstats plots in Shiny this year and thought I'd share the solution I've come up with to ensure they scale correctly and downloads match exactly what is shown in the app: simon-smart88.github.io/forest_plot_...

simon-smart88.github.io

Seeing the forest for the lines - Scaling complex base plots in Shiny

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

This is definitely not the case - people have been free to fork wikipedia from the get go as everything is CC licenced. All contributors are made aware of this every time they edit an article.

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Simon Smart @simonsmart.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Also, are you aware of {wallace}? That's what I forked to make {shinyscholar} and seems to have some crossover with what you're doing - I think it can load paleo data as well as current data.

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