Part 1 — Session guide

September 2026 session: how a model learns, followed by a West Nile virus prediction workflow.

Follow the session

  1. Open part1.Rproj in RStudio; keep part1/ as the working directory.
  2. Run source("install-packages.R"), then source("check-setup.R").
  3. Start with the teaching notebook.
  4. Work through the student practice script.
  5. Try the exercise and compare it with the solution.

Slide viewer · PowerPoint · Rendered notebook

The gradient descent app is an optional interactive demonstration. See the data guide and sources for the evidence behind the teaching example.

The student practice requires rpart and rpart.plot. To run every section of the instructor notebook, also install ggplot2, dplyr, data.table, maps, pROC, mlr3, mlr3learners and ranger.

From this folder, render the teaching notebook with quarto render. Its output is docs/index.html. The copied rendered files are the September snapshot; copying them does not rerun the models.

Series guide · Part 2