Informatics Seminar: Literate Computing for Healthcare and Data Science

Abstract: Individuals and organizations increasingly analyze data by writing code. Yet, these analyses are often fragile and messy, relying on fragmented and unannotated scripts which can be difficult to piece together or retrace. How might we help people work with data in ways that are more reproducible and robust? One solution is to use literate computing environments to mix live code, interactive visualizations, and explanatory text in a single document. In this talk, I will discuss how people use two literate computing environments (Jupyter Notebooks and clinical note editors) and how these tools might be redesigned to encourage analyses that are more collaborative, reproducible, and sound.

Bio:  Adam Rule is a postdoctoral scholar in Medical Informatics at Oregon Health & Science University. His research spans human-computer interaction, informatics, and cognitive science. Adam currently studies how people work with data in literate computing environments, such as Jupyter Notebook, and how these environments might be redesigned support more collaborative, reproducible, and sound data analyses. Adam's papers have received best paper honorable mentions at the ACM's CHI and HRI conferences and informed the design of industry-leading data analysis software. Adam received his PhD in Cognitive Science at UC San Diego where he worked with Jim Hollan in the Design Lab.

A reception for attendees will be held at 3:30 p.m. in CS 150.