Motivations

Pittard Consulting of Decatur LLC was founded in 2014 in recognition of the unique technology needs of Higher Education. We provide training and consultation services involving the management, preparation, and analysis of large scale data and cloud-based infrastructure. In particular our areas of expertise are High Performance Computing (HPC), large-scale data storage, R and Python education and classes, Amazon cloud computing, and online learning solutions. We also work closely with Central and Departmental IT groups to assess, update, and optimize service offerings to better support computational researchers. See our Services page for a full description of what we can do for you.

R and Python Programming and Data Science Training

R is the is the most frequently used analytics / data science software, followed by Python, and SQL

For researchers, post-docs, and students we can help you become facile with software tools such as R and Python as well as visualization packages including ggplot2 and Tableau. The annual KDnuggets Survey indicates that R remains the most popular data science language. While data wrangling and analysis skills are essential in areas such as genomic research this need now extends to the Humanities and Public Health wherein being able to mine social media data has become an important skill. Being able to clean and manage data alone is a valuable skill in addition to knowing how to perform basic statistical analysis and visualization. In some cases in depth programming knowledge is not necessary to build preliminary prediction or classification models in which case tools like Orange and Weka can be used to rapidly assess data. We also provide education on how to author reproducible research documents that effectively represent your work with the added capability of others being able to reproduce it.  We can also assist in the preparation of documentation and budget estimates for inclusion in grant proposals and external funding requests.

Technology is undeniably playing a much larger role in research of all types which in turn requires solid computational expertise to accomplish. The volume of data, as well as the speed and granularity at which it is being generated, is overwhelming for the typical Information Technology department let alone the individual researcher. Let us help you understand your computational and educational options to help you remain competitive and successful in your computationally-based research and NIH grant applications.