Gaston Sanchez

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I'm a statistician, data scientist, and lecturer in the Department of Statistics, at UC Berkeley. Professionally, I dedicate most of my time to:

• authoring materials for teaching purposes (books, tutorials, slides, etc.),
• using graphical displays to understand data with visualization,
• applying multivariate methods for exploring, analyzing, and visualizing data in a context of multiple variables and high dimensionality,
• reflecting about computational reproducibility topics and open science,
• and helping researchers and scientists analyze their data.

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Give Now

If you find any value and usefulness in the resources of this site, please consider making a one-time donation in any amount. Your support really matters.

Alternatively, you can also help me with my Amazon wishlist.

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Books

• Handling Strings with R. This book aims to help you get started with manipulating strings with R (new bookdown version, work in progress).
• Handling and Processing Strings in R (old pdf version).
• Pack YouR Code. This book aims to help you get started with the creation of a basic R package.
• A booklet of R factors. This little book focuses on the basics, and not so basics, of R factors (work in progress).
• A Matrix Algebra Companion for Statistical Learning. The purpose of this book is to help you understand how statistical notions are connected to matrix algebra concepts that constantly appear around Statistical Learning methods (work in progress).
• PLS Path Modeling with R. This book provides a hands-on introduction to Partial Least Squares Path Modeling (PLS-PM) using the R package "plspm".
• The Saga of PLS. This text narrates the story behind the origins, development, and evolution of Partial Least Squares (PLS) methods.

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Teaching

Some of the courses I've taught in the Department of Statistics, UC Berkeley.

• Stat 2: Introduction to Statistics
• Stat 20: Introduction to Probability and Statistics
• Stat 131A: Introduction to Probability and Statistics for Life Scientists
• Stat 133: Concepts in Computing with Data
• Stat 154: Modern Statistical Prediction and Machine Learning
• Stat 159: Reproducible and Collaborative Statistical Data Science
• Stat 243: Introduction to Computational Statistics

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Tutorials

 Basics of Computing with Data

• The Data Analysis Cycle (DAC)
• Data Perspectives
• DAC and the filesystem
• Role of Data Visualization

 Command Line and Shell basics

• Unix basics
• Command Line
• Customizing Bash shell
• Filesystem
• Working with files and directories
• Pipes and redirections

 Version Control with Git

• Version Control Systems (VCS)
• Git Basics
• Basic Workflow
• Branches
• Remote Repositories

 Introduction to Data Visualization

• Introduction
• Classic Examples
• Visualization Basics
• Visual System
• Visual Perception
• What is Color
• Color Vision
• Effective Charts
• Various Examples
• Graphing Process
• Entertainment

 Getting Data from the Web with R

• Introduction
• Reading Files from the Web
• Basics of XML and HTML
• Parsing XML / HTML content
• Handling JSON Data
• HTTP Basics and RCurl Package
• Getting Data via Web Forms
• Getting Data via Web APIs

 R in non-interactive Mode

• Introduction
• Batch Mode
• Rscript
• Shell script
• Redirection

 Makefile

• Introduction
• Various Dependencies
• Various Targets
• Dependent Targets
• File System
• Phony Targets
• Defining Variables
• Automatic Variables
• Wildcard Function
• Pattern Rules
• Pattern Substitutions

 Create an R Package in Windows

• Introduction
• Setting up your PC
• Anatomy of an R package
• Standard (painful) Development
• Building and Checking
• Develop smarter, not harder

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Software

I'm a passionate R user as well as developer and maintainer of several R packages. All the code is available in my github repositories.

• plspm provides a toolkit exclusively dedicated to Partial Least Squares Path Modeling (PLS-PM) analysis.
• plsdepot a set of tools for performing Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis of one or two data tables.
• pathmox is dedicated to the Pathmox approach for obtaining segmentation trees in Partial Least Squares Path Modeling (PLS-PM) analysis.
• arcdiagram is a minimalist package to help you plot pretty arc diagrams in R.
• colortools is designed to help users generate color schemes and color palettes.
• matrixkit is an R package that provides a first aid kit for some matrix operations commonly used in multivariate data analysis methods.
• turner provides a set of handy functions to turn vectors (and lists of vectors) into other indexed data structures.
• tester provides human readable functions to test characteristics of some common R objects.
• cointoss is a toy package with simple functions for simulating tossing a coin.

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Talks

Slides of some of my talks.

• Promoting Open Science (UJAT, Tabasco).
• Unconventional Plots in R (BCC, Berkeley).
• Multiblock Dilemas (McGill University, Montreal).
• Arc Diagrams in R (Bay Area R Users Group).
• Thoughts on developing stats software in academia (LMA Agrocampus, Rennes).
• Tips for presentations. (Oniris, Nantes).
• Keep in mind these 5 things ... (Oniris, Nantes).

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Experiments

• Rtist: weird but beautiful random paintings.
• Got Plot: tiny collection of polished charts.
• Shiny-Introstats: shiny apps for introduction to statistics.
• Star Wars Arc Diagram: visualizing Star Wars movie scripts.
• genbiovis: deprecated experiment for visualizing titles of genetics & biology papers.
• Mining twitter with R: deprecated experiment that keeps catching people's attention.

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Blog

Occasionally, I like to talk about data analysis, visualization, statistics, R and related stuff in my blog Data Analysis Visually EnfoRced.

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Misc

• Fundamentos Teoricos de Maniobras con Cuerdas. This is a book in Spanish about the theoretical fundamentals of Rope Techniques.
• Poemario. A random collection of personal poems in Spanish.
• Quotes. A curated collection of some of my favorite quotes.

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