Getting Help

Shell commands

ls --help
man ls

git --help

In RStudio

Package Websites

Package websites often are the same exact content as help pages + vignettes, but easier to read and examples have already been rendered

Asking questions

Asking questions

Minimal Reproducible Examples

The reprex package helps you make reproducible examples and format them for pasting into GitHub, Slack, etc.

Reporting bugs (or is it just me?)

Pay attention when opening an issue on GitHub—sometimes they are only supposed to be used for bug reports or feature requests and will direct you elsewhere for asking for help

Asking AI (not recommended)

Beware of stochastic parrots¹

• LLMs don’t understand, but are good at mimicry
• Use with care:
  • May be wrong
  • May be inconsistent

• Tools like ChatGPT pose possible ethical issues
  • Plagiarism
  • Labor conditions
  • Inputs may be sent to parent companies

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_parrot

Getting help at UArizona

Getting help at UArizona

Resources: AI tools

• https://ecoevo.social/@cboettig/110934209180569370
• https://www.infoworld.com/article/3694611/8-chatgpt-tools-for-r-programming.html
• https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3442188.3445922
• https://medium.com/@konstantine_45825/chatgpt-is-no-stochastic-parrot-but-it-also-claims-that-1-is-greater-than-1-e3cd1fc303e0

Resources: UA community

• UA Data Science Institute
• UA Data Science Slack
• CCT Drop-in Hours, 9-10 on Tuesdays