[R] Los Angeles area R users group's first meeting

[Szilard Pafka]

We would like to invite you to the Los Angeles area R user group's first
meeting. This group is aimed to bring together practitioners (from
industry and academia alike) in order to exchange knowledge and
experience in solving data analysis/statistical problems by using R.
More information about the group at:
http://www.meetup.com/LAarea-R-usergroup/

Meeting: Four case studies of using R

The goal of this first meeting is to bring together people of a wide
range of interests related to R and to open a forum for discussions and
further interaction.

Agenda:

- Introduction
- Using R in research (Jan de Leeuw, UCLA)
- Using R in applications related to credit card transactions (Szilard
Pafka, Epoch)
- Using R in teaching (Rob Gould, UCLA)
- Using R in consulting (Brigid Brett-Esborn, UCLA)
- Q&A, general discussions
- Discussions/networking

We plan 15 minutes for each speaker and for the general discussions.
Then participants are encouraged to initiate discussions with each other
(the place is reserved until 9pm). Bottled water and cookies will be
available free of charge.

Please RSVP on meetup.com (http://www.meetup.com/LAarea-R-usergroup/) as
places are limited.

Those who are unfamiliar with R but would like to get basic hands-on
knowledge (installation, working with data, plotting etc.) are welcome
to attend the “Basic R” course (free) of the UCLA Statistical Consulting
Center, 5-7pm (right before the meetup) in the same room. Please email
to susan at stat.ucla.edu as places are limited. You can also download the
notes, or attend the course at another time at your convenience (see
http://scc.stat.ucla.edu/mini-courses/ ).

Our speakers:
- Jan de Leeuw is Distinguished Professor and Chair at UCLA Department
of Statistics. He is also Editor in Chief of the Journal of Statistical
Software (the primary journal for publishing work related to R) and the
Journal of Multivariate Analysis.
- Szilard Pafka, PhD is Chief Scientist at Epoch, a credit card
transactions processor. He uses R for various data analysis, statistical
modeling and visualization projects. Previously, he worked on a variety
of research problems ranging from physics to financial prices.
- Rob Gould received his PhD from UC San Diego in 1994 and has been at
UCLA since. He is director of the UCLA Center for Statistics Education,
Associate Director of Professional Development of the Consortium of the
Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education, and former chair of
the ASA Advisory Committee on Teacher Enhancement.
- Brigid Brett-Esborn is a PhD student in the Department of Statistics
at UCLA.  She also works as a consultant with the Department's
Statistical Consulting Center and the Statistical Computing group within
UCLA's Academic Technology Services department.  She has contributed to
the Journal of Statistical Software.

Time and venue:
May 7, 2009, Thursday, 7-9pm
UCLA Boelter Hall Room 9413
(this room is next to the Statistical Consulting Center, Boelter Hall 9434)
The only way to access the venue is from the southeast corner of Boelter
Hall (southeast elevator/southeast stairwell). Directions here:
http://scc.stat.ucla.edu/contact-us/map/
To find Boelter Hall on campus: http://maps.ucla.edu/campus/
Information on how to get to UCLA: http://www.ucla.edu/map/