Crafting a Strong Argument: The Three Layers of Effective Writing

Welcome to ten minute to better writing. If, like me, you find yourself writing a lot in English as a non-native speaker, I hope that you will find some of the tips I share in the videos below useful. I have broken down the material into 10 videos each about…

Is data literacy more important than data analytics? I think it is true for most people that learning data analytics is less important than learning the fundamentals of data literacy. This is why after teaching data analytics for about 6 years, I am now creating a data literacy class. My…

Adopting a historical perspective on things we take for granted is often fascinating. For example, measurement is not something one usually spends a lot of time questioning. But did you know that the meter was last redefined in 1983, only 39 years ago? It was defined as “The length of…

In a recent column, Tim Harford said: “For most of us, the scarce resources in this information war aren’t years of study or intellectual brilliance. They are softer assets: curiosity, patience, persistence and judgment. It is not too late to bring them to the battle.” While this claim might seem…

“We know that verbs have more vigor than nouns, that active verbs are better than passive verbs, that short words and sentences are easier to read than long ones, that concrete details are easier to process than vague abstractions.” In this sentence from On Writing Well, William Zinsser gives us…

Deep Work by Cal Newport is a book about getting more done. For once, I like the title, it both summarises the book well and is more or less unforgettable. In the introduction, Newport suggests that to do important work, you need to find the time to focus deeply. …

This is the transcript of my video, what is the file system? that you can find on YouTube. Welcome to this video about the filesystem. The filesystem is the way your computer stores and retrieves files on your computer. It tells the computer where the files are. And not…

This is the transcript of my video about installing R and R Studio. You can find the video on YouTube: Installing R and R Studio. Welcome to this short video about installing R and RStudio. I’m going to demonstrate how to download the software and know to install it…

Do not read This one is easy: you should not read from notes. It does not matter if you stutter, search for your words, nothing — NOTHING! — is worse than someone reading from notes instead of presenting. Reading prevents you from connecting to your audience! If you read because your are unsure…