About Me

I am (mostly) retired and eagerly exploring my next chapter! I'm blogging about my retirement journey at My Next Chapter blog.

One of the things I'm doing more of with my increased free time? Creating more public service data projects! I presented a 5-minute lightning talk on that topic at the posit::con(2025) data science conference in Atlanta:

Background

I spent most of my career as a journalist. My final full-time post was a hybrid job combining data analysis with writing. I was also author and host of InfoWorld's Do More With R series. I still occasionally freelance for Computerworld and InfoWorld.

I've taught workshops for ProPublica, the New England First Amendment Coalition, and at Investigative Reporters and Editors conferences. And, I keynoted the 2020 European R User Meeting.

My most recent presentation was for R-Ladies Paris (remotely) on tools and resources for using generative AI with R. Video | Slides | GitHub repo

I received an ASBPE national gold award for impact/investigative online excellence (see story), a 2023 Neal Award for best instructional content, and two ASBPE national golds for best how-to articles (see 2014 and 2017 winners). I was also named the Digital Analytics Association's top practitioner in 2021.

My book, Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism, is available from publisher CRC Press and Amazon (you can see Six chapters free online).

I hold an Extra-class ham radio license and was honored by the Association of Radio Amateurs of Bosnia & Herzegovina "for extraordinary contribution to transmitting humanitarian messages of the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina" during the 1992-95 war.

I'm somewhat obsessed with both generative AI and the R programming language. You can check out some of the Web apps I've coded at https://www.machlis.com/apps.php. My other hobbies include photography, travel, hiking, crocheting, and dabbling with languages (currently Brazilian Portuguese and American Sign Language).

Social Media

You can follow me on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/smachlis.bsky.social, Mastodon at @smach@masto.machlis.com and my searchable app with my Mastodon posts, and on LinkedIn.

My Recent InfoWorld and Computerworld Articles

In Memoriam: Lucas Mearian, 1962-2025 2025-10-29

How to run an R data visualization chatbot you can talk to 2025-10-16

Chat with data the easy way in R or Python 2025-09-04

Databot: AI-assisted data analysis in R or Python 2025-09-04

How to create your own RAG applications in R 2025-07-17

GenAI tools for R: New tools to make R programming easier 2025-03-25

3 of the best LLM integration tools for R 2025-03-11

Analyze text using natural language with Claude for Google Sheets 2024-12-17

Create searchable Bluesky bookmarks with R 2024-12-09

FAQ: Getting started with Bluesky 2024-12-09

Shiny for Python adds chat component for generative AI chatbots 2024-07-23

Maker of RStudio launches new R and Python IDE 2024-06-24

5 easy ways to run an LLM locally 2024-03-28

How to run R in Visual Studio Code 2024-02-15

Posit lays off R Markdown, knitr creator Yihui Xie 2024-01-05

My Data-Related Mastodon Posts

Turn Claude into an expert on writing {testthat} #Rstats 📦 version 3 R tests with the Claude Testing R Packages skill by @Posit
https://github.com/posit-dev/skills/tree/main/r-lib/testing-r-packages
That repo has other skills including how to use brand.yml with Quarto and Shiny
https://github.com/posit-dev/skills (2025-12-24 12:49:43.099)  >>

@robotistry To each their own. To me, he was trying to demonstrate how to make a more compelling graph in general. If he was using these techniques in the real world, he would have the underlying data and not be approximating. (2025-12-23 15:11:59.582)  >>

Here's how Yan Holtz improves a line chart step by step. So useful to see how a design professional makes a default #dataviz so much more compelling! Plus you can turn each change on and off in his interactive article:
https://www.react-graph-gallery.com/example/line-chart-design-improvement (2025-12-23 02:05:07.819)  >>

Turn YAML into R and R into YAML with the new {yaml12} #RStats 📦
https://posit-dev.github.io/r-yaml12/index.html
By @t_kalinowski

On the 📦 website: "YAML in 2 Minutes: A Gentle Introduction for R Users"
https://posit-dev.github.io/r-yaml12/articles/yaml-2-minute-intro.html (2025-12-16 13:55:57.139)  >>