Good morning!
Welcome to the fourteenth ever issue of Monday Morning Data Science from the Fred Hutch Data Science Laboratory. We are excited to show you what we have been working on (Fresh from the Lab), plus links that we think you would be interested in (Our Weekly Bookmarks Bar). Part of the purpose of this newsletter is to start conversations, so if you have a question or there is something you would like to share with us please let us know by responding directly to this email.
Fresh from the Lab
[Event: R User Group] Tuesday 2/7 at 1pm the monthly R User group will be meeting online only on Teams. If you would like to talk about an R subject that you are interested please let Sean know so that the Data Science Lab can support you!
[Event: Data House Calls] Wednesday 2/8 at 10am we’ll have our weekly Data House Calls drop in hour on Teams. Drop by to talk about needed support for data challenges, coding challenges, computing questions, data management, etc. If the DaSL team can’t help you, they will be able to ping several other folks with different skill sets (including SciComp, the DaSL training group, the Hutch Data Core, etc) and get the right connections for you.
Our Weekly Bookmarks Bar
[Blog Post: Simulation Games] Will Wright, the designer of SimCity, SimEarth, SimAnt, and other popular games from Maxis, gave a talk at Terry Winograd’s user interface class at Stanford in 1996. He demonstrated an early version of The Sims, and discussed the design of simulation games and user interfaces. He highlighted the importance of designing the simulation model, game play, user interface, and users model together. Stanford University has now published a video recording of the talk, which includes Will Wright demonstrating and giving postmortems for SimEarth, SimAnt, and SimCity 2000.
[Blog Post: Is AM Radio Dead?] AM radio has been around for a long time, but its relevance in today's always-connected society is fading. Companies like Tesla have stopped shipping AM radio entirely. The FCC Commissioner advocates for preservation, citing the popularity of AM radio for farmers and emergency coverage. However, AM signals are susceptible to interference, and FM offers a far superior listening experience. Despite nostalgia for the 'warmth of the AM signal', content is king, and if radio stations don't have the content people want to hear, they will seek out other ways to listen.
As always you can contact us by replying directly to this email, you can email Jeff Leek, Amy Paguirigan, and Sean Kross at data@fredhutch.org, or you are welcome to join us on the Fred Hutch Data Slack Workspace. For more information about the Fred Hutch Data Science Lab, visit our website: https://hutchdatascience.org/. See you next week!
- The Fred Hutch Data Science Laboratory