1. Toward an R Package for NYS Educational Data Analysis and Reporting
Paul de Barros
Chief Statistician & STEM Department Chair, GTHCS
If you downloaded this file and are reading it yourself,
make sure you read the notes for each slide.

2. What are we doing today? Not spending a lot of time in PowerPoint
Installing an R package (or two)
Exploring and playing with some functions
Talking about Git and GitHub
Making an impassioned plea
I always like to include an agenda for a presentation.

3. Get started with dBtools
install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("debarros/dBtools")
help(package = dBtools)
These are the three lines of code to run in R to get started.

4. OK, let’s go straight to R
At this point in the presentation, we install the dBtools package and play around with it. We also look at how you can download the project and play with the package at home. You just go to the github page for the package and download it from there. Also, make yourself a github account and fork the project into your own account.

5. State Reporting BedsDate schoolYear CNMS.MakeBulkUpload
GetNiceColumnNames
getSchoolDistrict, VgetSchoolDistrict
write.SIRS
These are the functions in dBtools that are useful for state reporting stuff.

6. Data Manipulation betterComp, VbetterComp, MbetterComp
betterGreater, VbetterGreater, MbetterGreater
betterGrep, betterGrepl, VbetterGrepl, betterGrepl.any
betterMax, VbetterMax, MbetterMax, M2VbetterMax
betterMin, VbetterMin
na.to.empty, DFna.to.empty
CreateCompareMatrix
These functions manipulate data in various ways.
The “better” prefix indicates that they handle missing values in the way that I prefer.
“V” means they operate on vectors.
“M” means they operate on matrices.

7. Data Adjustment xlDate intersectSeveral one.drop setlength SortLength
These things are useful for little adjustments and whatnot. The xlDate function is my favorite.

8. Neat Stuff CopyClipboard SWSM UpdateDescription VectorSentence
CopyClipboard is really useful if you work on a Windows machine and need to copy and paste file paths.
UpdateDescription is useful if you build packages in R.

9. File Stuff SearchFiles.intersect SearchFiles.union SearchFiles.select
read.csv.multi
read.xlsx.multi
write.psimport
write.SIRS
Make a project where you run something like
LocalFilenames = list.files(path = "C:/", full.names = T, recursive = T)
Then you can use the SearchFiles functions on the LocalFilenames object and you don’t have to deal with the fact that Windows’s search capability is terrible.
write.psimport is for PowerSchool users
write.SIRS outputs data in the format that Level 0 expects

10. Stuff that probably doesn’t generalize
FindInconsistentActiveStatus
UnEnrolledInCohort
Just ignore these functions. Maybe they’ll be useful one day, but right now they are super specific to the way I handle data.

11. The Impassioned Plea Efficiency and OOP Shared challenges Automation
Individual
Group
Shared challenges
Shared solutions
Automation
- You guys know what object oriented programming is?
- - I wrote this package because I didn’t want to keep rewriting these functions over and over
- - I shared this packaged because I didn’t want other people to keep writing these functions over and over
- We all handle data that comes the same format, or needs to end up in the same format
- - My vision is a collaborative community of R programmers working together to produce code that is tailored to our shared needs
- Imagine a simple R script that pulls all of your eScholar extracts from your SMS and then runs checks on the relationships between them, that looks for abnormalities that perhaps even Level 0 doesn’t notice. Imagine that it provides easily readable output that makes recommendations about solving problems. Imagine that it takes L2RPT downloads as additional inputs, and then looks for mismatches. Imagine that it takes an input file of personnel in your district and s them the relevant recommendations and checks. These things are possible, but only if (a) you hire a team of developers to work with just your district, or (b) we all work together to produce this thing.