Document Digital Tools

byandell.github.io/Documentation (GitHub)

My Documentation Journey

This repository is a collection of useful documentation and tutorials for various topics, mostly related to code languages and tools. These were previously dispersed in various GitHub repositories and organizations, and have been consolidated here, with a few exceptions. These reflect my ideas on how Data Evolve in concert with the evolution of code-based tools and languages.

R Language

I first encountered S in the mid-1970’s while at UC-Berkeley, when David Brillinger brought a copy from Bell Labs. Fellow student Ross Ihaka later went on to co-design R (see Background R Material). When I joined UW-Madison in 1982, I became friends with Doug Bates who became (and still is) a key member of the core R development team. I kept coming back to this system as it matured over coming decades.

My notes on R were organized for a 2017 COMBEE short course in the UW-Madison Data Science Hub, which remain in their UW-Madison-DataScience GitHub Organization as the repository R_for_data_sciences.

Systems Genetics

I have collaborated with System Genetics researchers for several decades, with material gathered in my GitHub Organization byandell-sysgen and in multiple publications (see my CV). There is an evolution of code in the repositories of the byandell-sysgen organization.

Environmental Systems

My exploration of earth data science (EDA) is in my GitHub Organization byandell-envsys. This journey began with my introduction to the Environmental Data Science Innovation & Impact Lab (ESIIL). I took some short courses on EDA through ESIIL, which led to my geospatial package; with references now migrated to Environmental Systems. I attended the ESIIL Innovation Summit in 2023 (and every year since), which introduced me to many amazing people who have become friends. An exciting mix of top-notch IT experts gather to share learning and access to state-of-the-art tools. Through ESIIL I have gotten to know a collection of Tribal data scientists with amazing skills and perspectives on knowledge, science, the earth and all our relatives.

My learning about environmental systems spans technical, cultural and environmental spheres. I have collaborated as part of the ESIIL Working Groups for Maka Sitomniya (2024-2026) (see ESIIL Data Library and datacube/notebooks) and Three Rivers (2025). The Maka Sitomniya working group led to an ongoing collaboration with the Sicangu Climate Center. Lately, I have joined the Wopasi Pazo ESIIL Working Group

I began attending the Friday noon meetings of the Oglala Lakota College (OLC) Math, Science, and Technology Department, which has included a collaboration on Tribal boundary maps, gathered in the R package landmapr. I was asked to be a senior advisor for the ESIIL Stars program and am assisting with the OLC team.

The 2024-25 CU Boulder EarthLab course on Earth Data Analytics helped learn to organize Python code and ideas. I developed these into the landmapyr package. My notes on Python and related topics developed during the course are in Python Language and Environmental Systems, now gathered in this repository.

Shiny Apps

I have been learning about Shiny since before I attended the rstudio::conf(2017) (slides). Notes on my shiny apps are in Shiny Apps. I created the geyser repository to help me consolidate my understanding of Shiny with concrete examples in R and Python. This uses the Old Faithful shiny app where the data are included in the R system as data(faithful), and in the Python package seaborn as geyser.

Developing the geyser repo gave me more experience with Quarto for interactive slides and demos. See Quarto Slides & References.

Learning about AI

My learning about AI agents and tools continues to evolve. Initial thoughts on so-called artifical intelligence are in my blog about Jaron Lanier’s There is no AI. Ideas and notes on the concept and evolution of “AI” tools are in the AI (“Artificial Intelligence”) pages.

About These Pages

Migrated to GitHub Pages on 2026-06-16 with help of Convert Markdown to GitHub Pages by Nicolas Vanhoren. Modified theme in _config.yml to just-the-docs.

Table of contents

This site uses Just the Docs, a documentation theme for Jekyll.