Documentation

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.

My notes on R were organized for a 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.

I have been working in System Genetics for several decades, with material gathered in the GitHub Organization byandell-sysgen. There is an evolution of code in the repositories of this organization.

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 here in geospatial.md. 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 and the earth.

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.

I attended the CU Boulder EarthLab course on Earth Data Analytics. To help me understand and organize code and ideas, I developed the landmapy package. My notes on Python and related topics developed during the course are in Python References, Python Coding Strategy, and Environmental Systems References, now gathered in this repository.

I had been learning about Shiny since before I attended the rstudio::conf(2017) (GitHub). Notes on my shiny apps are in ShinyApps.md. 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. See also Quarto references for other types of interactive documents.

My learning about AI agents and tools is evolving, including the repository sysgenAnalysis. Initial thoughts on so-called artifical intelligence are in my blog about Jaron Lanier’s There is no AI. References about the concept and evolution “AI” tools are in AI.md.

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.