We are so excited to welcome our newest team member: Arthur Marques. Arthur has hit the ground running. Working with his teaching partner Mohammad, Arthur has already co-facilitated workshops in R and SPSS. Arthur is also developing a Python workshop, which he will start offering this fall. Stay tuned to our newsletter to find out exact dates! We were able to recently catch up with Arthur to learn a little bit more about him.
What areas does your own graduate research focus on?
My graduate research focuses on Software Engineering and, more specifically, on identifying and mapping knowledge spread through software documents. It is a super exciting topic because it merges together software engineering, cognitive sciences, and natural language processing. There is a quote from Information Foraging theory that summarizes my research topic flawlessly:
“Providing people with access to more information is not the problem. Rather, the problem is one of maximizing the allocation of human attention to information that will be useful.” – Pirolli and Card
Which Research Commons tools have you been able to use for your work? How did you use them?
I often use a mix of Python and R as part of my work. Python is exceptionally flexible, and it helps me almost daily. I use it in natural language processing tasks such as finding the subject of a sentence or understanding its meaning. Whenever I have to plot charts or do any statistical analysis, R is my go-to. I am always amazed by how much resources R has available (which sometimes makes me have a cheat-sheet nearby).
What one thing about the Research Commons do you wish more graduate students knew about?
While the workshops target a broad audience, we always make sure that attendees introduce themselves and what they expect to gain at the end of the workshop. The team often uses this information to give tailored one-on-one tips to accommodate attendees’ needs.
Tell us about something that would surprise others to know about you.
I have played Dungeons & Dragons with the same friends since I was 14. At some point, the same group of friends was scattered through China, Brazil, Canada, and the US though we amazingly found time to Skype and play together.
Welcome Arthur! We are so excited to have your expertise and energy on the team. To find out more about any of the resources that Arthur mentioned, email us at research.commons@ubc.ca. Whether you are polishing your quantitative data analysis off or just getting started, book a one-on-one consult with Arthur.