As part of our R for HTA workshop, we have also prepared a kind-of-hackathon, which we are now releasing to the general public (I think “general public” is a bit pretentious, but this afternoon, I’m in the right mood for it, I think…).

Participation is actually open to all (and we’ll advertise more widely on relevant mailing lists) but we expect contributions particularly from anyone attending the workshop, which will be held at UCL on 9th July.

The 6-step challenge (which has been put together by Nathan, with inputs from Howard and a couple of very minor comments from me — I think/hope I’m not missing out any other contributor!) is available from here.

Participants should email their code solutions, including a main.R or main.Rmd script, to [email protected] by 24th June 2019. I think we are allowing group submissions, as long as this is acknowledged clearly.

The code will be judged on the grounds of speed, elegance, and transparency/readability. First, second, and third place ranked solutions will be given signed e-certificates confirming their achievement. However, this exercise aims to encourage a collaborative approach to the programming and there will be time for discussion of solutions and problems at the 9th July workshop. Participants will be encouraged to briefly talk through their solutions.