Talks

Slides and abstracts for talks and workshops.

Beyond the Basics: Data Visualisation for Young African Statisticians

In this talk, I’ll showcase why you should visualise data, present some guidelines for making more effective charts, before discussing examples of good and not so good charts.

RSS Young Statisticians Section, Online

Designing for decision-making: How to build effective data visualisations

In this talk, I’ll showcase why you should visualise data, present some guidelines for making more effective charts, before discussing examples of good and not so good charts.

WOMBAT 2025, Melbourne, Australia

Accessibility in official statistics

There are simple steps that analysts and data scientists can take to improve the accessibility of dashboards, interactive reports, and other outputs. In this session we will aim to cover some of these to help you improve the accessibility of your work.

RSS Conference, Edinburgh, UK

Book publishing as a scholarly activity

This talk will share my personal experiences of writing and publishing a book as a scholarly activity. It will cover engaging with publishers, contracts, the writing process, and the benefits and challenges of book writing as an early career academic.

RSS Conference, Edinburgh, UK

Introduction to Julia for Statisticians

R is widely used for statistics and data analysis, but Julia offers high performance with a user-friendly syntax, making it an appealing alternative. This talk explores how statisticians can benefit from Julia, get started with it, and integrate it with R.

RSS Conference, Edinburgh, UK

Making `messy` data

In this session, I’ll introduce the ‘messy’ R package designed to introduce controlled levels of messiness into existing, clean datasets. It retains the structure of familiar example datasets while providing students with a realistic, manageable data cleaning experience.

RSS Manchester Local Group, Online

Engaging and effective data visualisations

This talk will showcase why you should visualise data and present some guidelines for making better charts to improve decision-making, before we discuss examples of good and bad charts.

SICSS, Edinburgh, UK

Interactive charts in R and beyond

In this session, we’ll be talking about different ways that you can make interactive charts using R, or a combination of R and other tools. You’ll see examples of creating tooltips and dropdown menus - all browser-based, no server required!

EdinbR User Group, Edinburgh, UK

Introduction to Git and GitHub for R Users

In this workshop, attendees will learn how to use GitHub in conjunction with RStudio. This session is for you if you don’t have any experience of Git or GitHub but you’d like to get started!

R-Ladies St Louis, Online

Communicating data more effectively with visualisation

This talk will showcase why you should visualise data and present some guidelines for making better charts to improve decision-making, before we discuss examples of good and bad charts.

Improving research communication with data visualisation

This talk will showcase why you should visualise data and present some guidelines for making better charts to improve decision-making, before we discuss examples of good and bad charts.

Practical Techniques for Polished Visuals with Plotnine

Plotnine is a Python library that implements the Grammar of Graphics, enabling users to create complex, layered plots. This talk covers techniques for customising plots, and highlights how plotnine integrates with matplotlib.

PyData Global, Online

More effective data visualisations for improving communication with decision makers

This talk will showcase why you should visualise data and present some guidelines for making better charts to improve decision-making, before we discuss examples of good and bad charts.

Friday Forecasting Talks, Online

Parameterized plots and reports with R and Quarto

This two hour workshop will introduce you to creating parameterized reports and plots using ggplot2 and Quarto.

R/Pharma, Online

Engaging young people in statistics

This panel session will share insights on outreach, on the challenges and opportunities around teaching statistics in the school curriculum, and on engaging with the general population to inspire them about statistics and data.

RSS International Conference 2024, Brighton, UK

Introduction to machine learning with {tidymodels} in R

This professional development workshop will introduce you to using {tidymodels} for machine learning in R.

RSS International Conference 2024, Brighton, UK

More interactive, more engaging: teaching R in a lecture environment

In this talk, I’ll describe ways that lecture materials can be adapted to include more engaging live-coding examples, whilst minimising the pain for both students and instructors alike.

RSS International Conference 2024, Brighton, UK

Getting started with generative art

This session, which is part of the pre-conference workshop for early career statisticians and data scientists organised by the YSS, will give you a practical introduction to generative art, and what it’s got to do with statistics and data science!

RSS International Conference 2024, Brighton, UK

Stop making spaghetti (code)

In this talk, I’ll discuss skills and training to better support the increasing number of early career researchers who are required to submit code, develop R packages, and maintain and open source projects.

useR Conference, Online

Faster R code with Rust

This talk will demonstrate rewriting functions in Rust, calling Rust functions from R, and show a comparison of speed when using Rust for vectorising operations in R.

Manchester R User Group, Manchester, UK

Engaging and effective data visualisations

Good data visualisation requires appreciation and careful consideration of the technical aspects of data presentation. In this session, you’ll learn different ways to make your visualisations more effective and engaging.

Behavioural Science Summer School, Warwick, UK

Introduction to machine learning with {tidymodels}

This two hour interactive workshop will introduce you to common models and concepts in machine learning, and how to to implement them using {tidymodels} in R.

NHS-R Workshop, Online

How to make data visualizations for mobile in R

In this episode of R for the Rest of Us podcast, I was invited as a guest, to discuss my journey of using R and making data visualizations.

David Keyes & Nicola Rennie

R for the Rest of Us Podcast, Online

Introduction to Quarto for Research

This workshop will introduce you to Quarto, an open-source scientific and technical publishing system that allows you to combine narrative text, code, images, and tables. We’ll learn how to use Quarto for authoring journal articles.

Typst or LaTeX? Styling PDF documents with Quarto extensions

In this talk, I’ll give an overview of ways to create customised PDF documents using Quarto with a little help from R, LaTeX, and Typst.

SatRdays London, London, UK

Making your data visualisations more effective

In this talk, I’ll showcase why you should visualise data and how the RSS guide was developed, present some guidelines for making better charts, before we discuss examples of good and bad charts.

LIDA, Leeds, UK

Best practices for data visualisation

In this talk, Brian and Nicola will describe the motivation for creating the Royal Statistical Society’s data visualisation guide, describe its key recommendations to improve your data visualisations, and show you how to get involved.

Brian Tarran & Nicola Rennie

LSHTM, London, UK

Introduction to Shiny Apps in R

This one hour worshop provides an introduction to what Shiny is and what it can be used for, the basics of building UI and server elements, and an overview of deployment options.

LEC CEEDS Coding Club, Lancaster, UK

Forecasting with Generalised Additive Models (GAMs) in R

This workshop will provide an overview of generalised additive models (GAMs), demonstrate the practical aspects of fitting such models, and describe how to evaluate and interpret different them.

Forecasting for Social Good, Online

Practice of OR: Data Visualisation

As part of the parallel sessions section, I will deliver a short presentation on the use of data visualisation in OR before we open the floor to the round table discussion.

EURO Practitioners’ Forum, Online

Customizing slides and documents using Quarto extensions

This workshop will show you how to customise HTML and PDF outputs created with Quarto, and demonstrate the process of building your own Quarto extension to share your customisation with others.

Workshops for Ukraine, Online

Florence Nightingale Day: using data science to improve health outcomes

In this talk, I’ll discuss some of the research projects I’ve had the privilege to contribute to and showcase some of the ways we can make better use of data and technology within medicine.

Florence Nightingale Day, Lancaster, UK

Styling documents and building extensions with Quarto

This session will give an overview of ways to customise HTML outputs (including documents and revealjs slides) as well as PDF documents. We’ll also discuss the use of Quarto extensions as a way of sharing customised templates with others.

BPLIM Workshop, Porto, Portugal

Introduction to reproducible reporting with Quarto

This workshop will introduce you to Quarto, an open-source scientific and technical publishing system that allows you to combine narrative text, code, images, and tables.

R-Ladies Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Making Christmas cards with R

In this workshop, we’ll learn how to make Christmas cards using {ggplot2}, {ggforce}, and {sf} in R. You’ll also learn how to send them with R!

Oxford R User Group, Online

Teaching statistics interactively with webR

In this lightning talk, I’ll describe ways that teaching materials can be adjusted and made more engaging with live coding examples. It will include a demonstration of using webR to teach a simple statistical concept.

RSS/RoSE UK Statistics Education Meeting, London, UK

My STOR-i So Far

This talk will discuss my career path to date as part of the International Day of Women in Statistics and Data Science celebrations at STOR-i CDT.

STOR-i IDWSDS, Lancaster, UK

Building {ggflowchart}

This talk will discuss the inspiration for creating {ggflowchart}, the technical details of how it’s built, and the features being added next.

{ggplot2} extenders, Online

Thriving as a Data Scientist: Her Perspective

This panel discussion will hear career stories from four senior-level women in data science, followed by a question and answer session.

R/Pharma Conference 2023, Online

Introduction to machine learning with {tidymodels}

This two hour workshop will introduce you to using {tidymodels} for machine learning in R.

R/Pharma Conference 2023, Online

Data, technology and medicine: Using data science to improve health outcomes

This talk will showcase some of the research we’re currently doing within Lancaster Medical School to make better use of data and technology within medicine.

WILD Network, Lancaster, UK

Teaching statistics interactively with webR

In this talk, I’ll describe ways that teaching materials can be adjusted and made more engaging with live coding examples. It will include a demonstration of using webR to teach a simple statistical concept.

RSS International Conference 2023, Harrogate, UK

Data visualisation: new best practice guidance from RSS publications

In this workshop, we’ll discuss new best practice guidance for data visualisation for RSS publications.

Brian Tarran, Andreas Krause & Nicola Rennie

RSS International Conference 2023, Harrogate, UK

Programming in public

I’ll be talking about how sharing code on social media led to finding a community of people and new opportunities, and I’ll discuss one of my recent projects to develop data visualisation guidelines in R and Python.

PyData Lancaster, Lancaster, UK

Classification of phonocardiogram signals to detect heart murmurs

Phonocardiographs are used to capture high resolution recordings of heart sounds. I’ll discuss how we can use time series analysis to uncover hidden structures in the recordings, and use this information to detect heart murmurs.

N8 Digital Health Community Day, Leeds, UK

Using {tidymodels} to detect heart murmurs

This talk will give a brief overview of {tidymodels}, discuss the extraction of time series features, demonstrate the process of fitting machine learning models to heart sound recordings, and consider approaches to model evaluation.

R/Medicine 2023, Online

Creating your data science portfolio

Creating a data science portfolio can help you to develop your skills, and well as showcase them to the wider world. In this talk, we’ll discuss how to build a portfolio with #TidyTuesday.

R-Ladies Gaborone, Online

Custom colour scales for {ggplot2}

In this talk, I’ll show you how to make a your own custom colour scale functions to add your own colours to {ggplot2} graphics - no more copying and pasting scale_colour_manual()!

R Ladies Cambridge, Online

Finding #RStats resources with Shiny and GitHub Actions

In this talk I’ll show you how to collect data from Twitter using {rtweet}, schedule that data collection with GitHub Actions, and automatically deploy a Shiny app to display the data in a table.

Appsilon ShinyConf 2023, Online

Shiny Developer Series (Live)

The Shiny Developer Series will be recording live at #ShinyConf2023! We’ll be discussing recent innovations in Shiny and more.

Appsilon ShinyConf 2023, Online

The Cool Data Projects Show

In this episode of The Cool Data Projects Show with Kristen Kehrer from CometML, we talked about building cool Shiny apps, the joy of GitHub actions, and generative art!

Cool Data Projects Show, Online

Styling {ggplot2} graphics for accessibility

In this talk, I’ll discuss good practices for styling different elements of your plots, demonstrate how you implement these in {ggplot2}, and show you how defining your own theme functions can make the process smoother.

R Ladies London, London, UK

What can I do with Quarto?

In this talk, I’ll discuss what Quarto is and how it differs from R Markdown, demonstrate how to make simple documents, and showcase a few features of Quarto that make it incredibly useful.

Oxford R User Group, Oxford, UK

Reproducible data reports with Quarto

Quarto is an open-source scientific and technical publishing system. Quarto allows you to weave together narrative text and code to produce elegantly formatted output and tell a story.

Rhian Davies & Nicola Rennie (Jumping Rivers)

RSS International Conference 2022, Aberdeen, UK

Technical presentations are difficult - let’s make them easier!

This talk delivered for the Early Career Researcher pre-conference workshop organised by the Young Statisticians Section focuses on how to improve technical presentations.

RSS International Conference 2022, Aberdeen, UK

Say Hello! to Multilingual Shiny Apps

This lightning talk will highlight the importance and difficulties of building {shiny} apps in multiple languages.

rstudio::conf 2022, Washington D.C, USA

CAU Kiel: Advanced Business Analytics Guest Talk

This talk will highlight the types of projects that data scientists might work on, and some of the skills that have come in useful.

Advanced Business Analytics Guest Talk, CAU Kiel, Online

Learning `ggplot2` with generative art

This talk will highlight a few of the more subtle differences in some aspects of ggplot2 discovered through experimenting with generative art, and show how to exploit these subtleties to make more informative plots.

useR Conference, Online

R-Ladies Nairobi: #30DayChartChallenge

In this talk, I discuss why and how I created 30 charts for the #30DayChartChallenge, the aspects I found most challenging, and some interesting things I discovered in R along the way!

R-Ladies Nairobi, Online

Women in Stats and Data Science at Lancaster University

A panel discussion on the career path of Women in Statistics and Data Science at Lancaster University as we celebrate International Women’s Day. A panel of speakers from Lancaster University will answer questions.

Lancaster University, Online

We’re not getting any younger! Or should that be older?

A talk on the article I wrote as a finalist in the 2021 Statistical Excellence Award for Early-Career Writing by Significance and the RSS Young Statisticians Section.

RSS International Conference 2021, Online

Detecting outlying demand in multi-leg bookings for transportation networks

A (virtual) talk I gave at the 31st European Conference on Operational Research (EURO) at University of West Attica, Greece.

Detecting outlier demand in revenue management networks

A (virtual) talk I gave at the 3rd IMA and OR Society Conference on Mathematics of Operational Research.

Detecting outlier demand in railway networks

A (virtual) talk I gave at the 5th AIRO Young Workshop at Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy.

5th AIRO Young Workshop, Online

Identifying and responding to outlier demand in revenue management

A (virtual) talk I prepared for the STOR-i Workshop on Prediction + Optimization 2020. Cancelled due to Covid-19.

STOR-i POP, Lancaster, UK

Considering outlier detection to identify extraordinary demand events for quantity-based revenue management

A talk I gave at the European Working Group on Pricing and Revenue Management at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands

The identification of inaccurate demand estimates

A talk I gave at the 30th European Conference on Operational Research (EURO) at University College Dublin.

EURO2019, Dublin, Ireland