Wrap-up: Where to go from here

Lecture 25

Dr. Benjamin Soltoff

Cornell University
INFO 3312/5312 - Spring 2026

May 5, 2026

End-of-semester logistics

Remaining assignments

• Extra credit
• Project 02

Build a simple data science stack

Posit Workbench

• Access to Posit Workbench will end at some point after May 17th
• All INFO 3312/5312 materials remain available in your repos on GitHub as long as you are an active student
• Any other work you have done on the server will not be accessible after the end of the semester
• Where will you go from here?

Software installation

Programming language

• R

IDE

• Positron
• RStudio IDE
• VS Code

Reproducibility

• Quarto
• Git

{renv}

To {renv} or not to {renv}

Benefits

• Isolated
• Portable
• Reproducible

Drawbacks

• It’s a pain to configure for every project
• Some packages have issues installing via {renv}

Install some core R packages

# install the major packages from the course published on CRAN
install.packages(c(
  "tidyverse", "tidymodels", "devtools", "usethis",
  "colorspace", "janitor", "skimr"
))

# install a package hosted on GitHub
remotes::install_github("hafen/geofacet")

Create a GitHub account

• Ordinary GitHub
• GitHub Enterprise for Cornell
• Migrate your repos from Cornell’s GitHub to GitHub.com

Configure Git

usethis::use_git_config(
  user.name = "Your name",
  user.email = "Email associated with your GitHub account"
)

Painless authentication with PAT

Personal Access Token

• Uses HTTPS protocol
• Integrates with the {usethis} package to automate some Git workflows
• Alternative: use SSH

Setup PAT authentication

• GitHub.com
• GitHub Enterprise

Create PAT

usethis::create_github_token(
  scopes = c("repo", "user", "gist", "workflow"),
  description = "<DESCRIBE YOUR DEVICE>"
)

Store PAT

gitcreds::gitcreds_set()

#> ? Enter password or token: ghp_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
#> -> Adding new credentials...
#> -> Removing credentials from cache...
#> -> Done.

Create PAT

usethis::create_github_token(
  scopes = c("repo", "user", "gist", "workflow"),
  description = "<DESCRIBE YOUR DEVICE>",
  host = "https://github.coecis.cornell.edu/"
)

Store PAT

gitcreds::gitcreds_set(url = "https://github.coecis.cornell.edu/")

#> ? Enter password or token: ghp_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
#> -> Adding new credentials...
#> -> Removing credentials from cache...
#> -> Done.

What have you learned?

Learning objectives for INFO 3312/5312

• Implement principles of designing and creating effective data visualizations.
• Evaluate, critique, and improve upon one’s own and others’ data visualizations based on how good a job the visualization does for communicating a message clearly and correctly.
• Post-process and refine plots for effective communication.
• Master using R and a variety of modern data visualization packages to reproducibly create data visualizations.
• Work reproducibly individually and collaboratively using Git and GitHub.

What’s next?

Find a community

Online communities

• Cornell R User Group
• Data Science Learning Community
• R Ladies
• Posit Community

Keep your skills fresh

• Integrate reproducible workflows into other courses/projects
• Tidy Tuesday
• Create a blog

Presentations on Wednesday the 13th!