Biography

Dr Tom Palmer, Senior Lecturer in Biostatistics

Interests

  • Causal inference
  • Medical statistics / Biostatistics
  • Mendelian randomization
  • R and Stata programming
  • Statistical methods for Epidemiology
  • PhD thesis pdf

Education

  • Postgradute Certificate in Academic Practice, 2018

    Lancaster University

  • PhD Extensions to Mendelian randomization, 2009

    University of Leicester

  • MSc in Medical Statistics, 2005

    University of Leicester

  • BSc in Mathematics and Economics, 2002

    University of Nottingham

Awards

Blog post included as a highlight in R Weekly blog and podcast

My blog post on Seven tips for creating Quarto revealjs presentations was included as a highlight in the R Weekly blogpost and podcast (episode 193). Thanks to Eric Nantz, Mike Thomas, Jon Calder, and the R Weekly team.

Secondment to software development team at the Bennett Institute

Two day per week secondment to the Reproducible Analytics Pipeline software development team in Prof. Ben Goldacre’s Bennett Institute, University of Oxford. I will work on R related projects within the OpenSAFELY programme.

Article in Best of IJE 2019

Spiller, et al., Software application profile: mrrobust–a tool for performing two-sample summary Mendelian randomization analyses, IJE, 48, 3, 684–690, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyy195 was the second most cited IJE paper in 2019.

Pfizer studentship to study MSc in Medical Statistics, University of Leicester

Recent Posts

Creating R, Python, Stata, and Julia tutorial worksheets (with and without solutions) using Quarto

How to programmatically include conditional content for several Quarto engines (knitr, jupyter: python3, jupyter: nbstata, and engine: julia) using parameters or environment variables to toggle inline code to write Markdown in the Quarto documents. I use this to write exercise/tutorial documents in which a single Quarto document is used to output both the questions and solutions documents.

Creating effectively multi-engine Quarto documents using Quarto's embed shortcode

Have you ever wanted to include different language engines within the same Quarto document such that the code chunks are executed when the document is rendered? I describe how to achieve this using Quarto’s embed shortcode.

Seven tips for creating Quarto revealjs presentations

Seven tips for making Quarto revealjs presentations including; testing at a different screen resolution, wider code styling, taller input and output code chunks, embedding Mentimeter presentations, disabling HTML table processing, and programmatic rendering and exporting pdfs for printing.

My #GitHubUnwrapped 2024!

My #GitHubUnwrapped 2024!

Launch RStudio, Positron, and other Data Science apps from your Finder Toolbar

Create Automator Apps to launch Data Science apps open in the current Finder window on macOS.

Talks

The MRC IEU R-Universe of Mendelian randomization related R packages πŸš€

The MRC IEU πŸš€ R-Universe of Mendelian randomization related R packages

Using Git, GitHub Desktop, and GitHub for novice and experienced users

Using allele scores to identify confounding by reverse causation: Studies of alcohol consumption as an exemplar

A review of group-based methods for teaching statistics in higher education