We wish to provide a resource enabling more diverse and inclusive examples to be used in teaching R. Often examples are based on subjects that tend to be more appealing to men (men's sport, cars, finance) or have a US/Western bias (politics, movies/pop songs). While such examples may still be interesting to people that don't usually think much about these things, more diverse and inclusive examples will help to engage a wider set of people.
Action focuses on three points:
- Detect and discourage use of "bad" widely used examples
- Collect/produce more diverse examples
- Collect/produce examples about gender and inclusivity
At the moment we are just collecting information on existing examples or sources of data that might provide relevant examples and bringing together those that have expressed an interest. This may be further developed as a webpage of resources for teachers and/or one or more R packages of examples.
Examples beyond topics that tend to be more appealing to men, or assume a certain cultural background. In particular avoiding: men's sports, cars, finance, national politics, specific TV/movie series and the like.
- RGB values of 20x20 pixel images of Bob Ross-style paintings
- Best in Show - what's the top data dog? looking at a score based on dog characteristics vs dog popularity. Google Sheet with all variables underlying score. From Information is Beautiful; other nice examples are Mountains out of Molehills - media inflamed fears, data from Google trends.
- Data Technologies boo early draft by Heike Hofmann and Di Cook has some different data examples.
People that are on forwards teaching team (forwards), have examples to contribute (examples), are interested in developing a package of examples (package) or who have generally expressed interest in the project (project). If you would like to make a suggestion, or collaborate on the project, please contact us at [email protected].
- Isabella Gollini, Di Cook, Jenny Bryan, Andrea Foulkes, Jonathan Godfrey, Joyce Robbins, Hadley Wickham [forwards]. Developing workshops for women and high school girls.
- Myfanwy Johnston [examples, package of UC Davis Ecology/Animal Behavior graduate data: pumas, frogs, sturgeon, salmon, birds, primates, more tba]
- Bob Rudis [package]
- Vilma Romero [project]
- Gordon Shotwell [project]
- Helena Jambor [project]. Posted call on Twitter to make datasets for girls (https://twitter.com/helenajambor/status/817391370042298368)
- Hao Ye, Lynn Waterhouse, Jessica Blanton, Tessa P [examples, project]. Developing workshop targeted at local high school girls. (https://twitter.com/Hao_and_Y/status/817427687346212865)