I ran the linear mixed effects models workshop yesterday. Since I have almost completely lost my voice I was doubly grateful for Gergana’s assistance! {Gergana is one of the people who run the Coding Club}
The workshop proved popular, apparently I even broke the attendance record (we run our of chairs in the room too). We had a good mix of undergrads, masters and PhD students. Some of them came to work through the tutorial, but a lot of them (most?) brought their own data that they wanted advice on.
This was a tad surprising - I expected people to have some questions more specific to their problems and data of course, but I didn’t think that quite so many would come to an intro to LMMs to seek advice on problems much beyond the content of the workshop. I guess they saw an opportunity to chat to someone about mixed models and took it - good for them :]
It certainly was a challenge for me! It’s one thing to write an introductory tutorial and a whole different ball game to advise on complex aspects of mixed models utilising data you have never seen and know nothing about.
I ended up staying for an hour and a half after the workshop and Gergana stayed too, bless her, but I think we have managed to move everybody’s projects forward and people were happy with the help they received. So I’m calling the workshop a success :]
I’m very proud of the Coding Club team, whose members bravely took on some of the questions: they were thrown into the deep end here. The students were great too, keen to learn and make the most of it.
Well done everyone!