Welcome to the Data-Viz Workshop Series!
After the success of our previous workshop series, we’re back with more free online skill-building webinars for early-career researchers in the field of zoology. For the theme of this workshop series, we’re buckling down on data visualization – an essential skill for any academic researcher! We have an outstanding line-up of data-viz experts who can’t wait to teach you the ins and outs of data visualization.
Before you register:
- You can choose to register for one or more workshops, however if you’re interested in taking one of our practical coding workshops, we advise you to follow to theoretical workshop
- You need to register for each workshop you wish to join separately!
- Make sure you are eligible for the practical workshops before registering – we require some R coding knowledge, since this is not an intro to R class. You can consult the required coding knowledge in the workshop descriptions above.
Be mindful that the practical workshops have a limited number of participants to retain interactivity with the host. This means not everyone who takes the theoretical workshop will be able to join a practical coding session. Places will be handed out on a first come first served basis. Do not worry if the practical sessions fill up, the theoretical session by itself is more than worth it!
Our workshops:
Session 1: Choosing the right chart for your data
In this first webinar, data-viz expert Yan Holtz will teach us his philosophy on chart choice. He will show us the decision-making process he employs to choose to the appropriate chart for our data, which will be guided by the dataset format and the context for which the chart is required. Additionally, Yan will provide an overview of common mistakes or caveats which can lead to misleading data visualizations and provide solutions and alternatives.
When: 29th of September 2021 – 10 AM – 12 PM CET
Who: Yan Holtz (https://www.yan-holtz.com)
Workshop type: Theoretical
Number of places: 80 participants
Session 2: Data visualization in R (Beginner)
For our second workshop, we will apply the theoretical knowledge acquired in session 1 and put it into practice. To do this, we’re joined by ggplot-wizard Cédric Scherer – an authority on data visualization in R. For this beginner session, Cédric will introduce us to the secrets of the ggplot universe, sharing with us his favourite tips and tricks to produce beautiful plots in R.
This session will be a practical tutorial with live coding, and an RMarkdown document containing the workshop’s code will be provided to follow along more easily. To maximize the time we have to learn the basics of ggplot, we require participants to have some fundamental knowledge of coding in R, including data input and some rudimentary plotting knowledge.
When: 4th of October 2021 – 10 AM-12 PM CET
Who: Cédric Scherer (https://www.cedricscherer.com/)
Workshop type: Practical
Number of places: 40 participants
Session 3: Data visualization in R (Advanced)
For our third workshop, we will continue with Cédric Scherer to take our ggplot skills to the next level! For this advanced user session, Cédric will challenge even those of us with ample ggplot experience. He will introduce us to a mixture of advanced plotting options, including spatial maps and animated graphs, to make us into all-round data-viz experts.
As with the previous session, this advanced session will be a practical tutorial with live coding, and an RMarkdown document containing the workshop’s code will be provided to follow along more easily. As this is the advanced user session, we require participants to either take our beginner workshop (session 2) first, or have considerable plotting experience using ggplot in R.
When: 8th of October 2021 – 10 AM-12 PM CET
Who: Cédric Scherer (https://www.cedricscherer.com/)
Workshop type: Practical
Number of places: 40 participants
Session 4: Session videos
Are you busy on the day of your favorite session, or has it filled up before you had the chance to follow along live? Not to worry! Go ahead and register for session 4 to receive a recording of the workshop sessions after the live workshop has been completed.
When: Upon completion of the live session
Number of places: Unlimited
The Data-Viz Challenge:
Are you ready to challenge yourself, and make the most of this workshop series? Then join the Data-Viz challenge!
We challenge our workshop participants to put their plotting skills to the test. We will provide the same open-source dataset to each participant and ask you to plot the data to the best of your ability using your newly learned ggplot-wizardry. Along with our data-viz experts, we will choose the three best plots from all submissions and award the winners with one or more of the following prizes:
- A 1-year free membership to the Royal Belgian Zoological Society, with benefits including free entrance to the Zoo of Antwerp, Planckendael and the Serpentarium, eligibility for RBZS grants, and more (see http://rbzs.be/membership/ for more information).
- Free registration to the Benelux Zoology 2021 conference
- A poster guide from the ‘From Data to Viz’ website, which will help you choose the correct chart for your data (https://www.data-to-viz.com/poster.html)
- The winning plots will be featured on the RBZS social media channels
A dedicated blog post by Yan Holtz featuring the winner’s plot on the R Graph Gallery and Python Graph Gallery (https://www.r-graph-gallery.com/)
Prize distribution:
Do you have what it takes? Then don’t hesitate and join our Data-Viz challenge!
| 1st place |
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| 2nd place |
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| 3rd place |
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Pro tip:
Do you want to see how much you’ve learned? Try our data-viz challenge before and after the practical workshop and compare the results! Check out our datasets below:
Beginner dataset: Cetaceans in captivity (https://github.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/tree/master/data/2018/2018-12-1)
Advanced dataset: Invasive species in Africa (https://github.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/tree/master/data/2018/2018-09-25)
About our hosts:
Who is Yan Holtz?
Yan Holtz is a data analyst and data visualization specialist current working for Datadog. As a profession, Yan helps both companies and researchers analyse their datasets, covering all steps from pre-processing to communicating results. Additionally, Yan Holtz is the co-author of the ‘From Data to Viz’ project, an online website providing a classification of chart types based on the input data format (https://www.data-to-viz.com/). The website provides a decision-tree that researchers can use to help guide them towards choosing the appropriate visualization for their dataset. For this, the project has been chosen as a winner of the ‘Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards’.
Website: https://www.yan-holtz.com
Who is Cédric Scherer?
Cédric Scherer is a data visualization expert and ggplot-wizard to the core. He has spoken about data visualization in R at a number of conferences, including the useR and Outlier conferences, and is the author of a range of highly successful online tutorials on data visualization in R. Professionally, Cédric works as a postdoctoral researcher in computational ecology at the Department for Ecological Dynamics of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin. Additionally, Cédric is working as an independent data visualization specialist, functioning as a designer, consultant, analyst, and workshop instructor for a large number of clients. Moreover, Cédric has won numerous data visualization competitions with his outstanding work.
Website: https://www.cedricscherer.com