Workshops and presentations

We hosted live workshops and recorded presentations as part of the Research Software Camp: Beyond the Spreadsheet (online from 1 to 12 November 2021).

All of the workshops and presentations were prepared and delivered by the speakers at the panel discussion "Do we have the right tools for research?".

person giving a presentation to people

Workshops

OpenRefine

Lucia Michielin introduced attendees to working with data in OpenRefine, and how to use it to work with data files on Wednesday 3 November 2021 (9:30 to 12:30 GMT).

Google Sheets

Mor Rubinstein, Head of Data Strategy at Parkinson UK, delivered a workshop on how to use advanced Google spreadsheet features even for beginners on Thursday 4 November, (11:00 to 12:00 GMT).

Filament - a collaborative Python workspace for data analysis

Euan Wielewski, Clive Siviour and Annie Sinclair introduced Filament before allowing participants to explore its capabilities. The workshop was designed to be accessible to people with any level of Python experience, from beginners to advanced programmers. Friday 5 November (10:00 to 12:00 GMT).

From Spreadsheets to R

RStudio certified instructors, Yanina Bellini Saibene and Paola Corrales put together this R introductory course for new or beginner coders. “From spreadsheets to R” was intended for people who use spreadsheets for data manipulation and analysis but would like to learn how to work with R and have never programmed. Tuesday 9 November 2021 (14:00 to 17:00 GMT).

Presentations

Excel meets Lambda

Andy Gordon from Microsoft Research discussed the programming possibilities opened up by LAMBDA in Excel – the world’s most widely used programming language – and outlined some research challenges.​

Access the presentations on Microsoft LAMBDA.

In defence of the spreadsheet: data and historical research

Lucy Huggins discussed the benefits of spreadsheets in addition to overcoming their limitations.

Watch the presentation on YouTube.

Find out more about the Research Software Camps