Roger Peng - Saving Lives, Thousands at a Time, Using R

Roger Peng, Johns Hopkins University

Air pollution levels in the United States have fallen substantially over the past 50 years due to increasingly stringent regulation, resulting in dramatic improvements in air quality and health. In parallel, there has been a revolution in air pollution epidemiology through the use of big data coupled with sophisticated statistical methods. At the center of all this is R, which has played a key role in allowing methodological development to happen in an open source manner, and has significantly accelerated the sharing of data and tools across the world. In this talk I will present some key examples of how R has enabled the creation of high-quality scientific evidence in support of air pollution policy and has contributed to protecting public health around the globe.