SQL Case

The SQL CASE function is one of my favorite. The command basically works like if-then command. If you are familiar with if-then commands, then feel free to skip this next bit.

If-Then

One of the reasons we have the amazing devices we do today is because a computer is capable of reasoning. A computer can compare two things and decide which one it likes.

Now, this may sound simple, but it's actually a subtle miracle. Anyone who has been stuck on the toothpaste isle trying to decide between the 45 kinds of toothpaste probably understands making decisions is ...

Creating Reusable Code

Writing report code which can be reused is critical to being an effective report specialist. By now, hopefully, you see the power of SQL-R, especially around HMIS data. But you may still feel slow. Or have thoughts like, "If I pulled these data into Excel I could manually filter them in 1/10th the time." That's probably true. But, after manually filtering dataset after dataset it becomes apparent finding a way to automate some tasks would save many hours in the long-run. Thus, writing an R scripts for routine work would save countless hours of monotony.

However ...

Trends of Homelessness, Rapid Rehousing, and Permanent Supportive Housing

Individuals Experiencing Homelessness

This graph shows the trend of those homeless in Tarrant County, week-to-week who meet the following conditions:

1. The person counted has stayed at least one night in a Night-by-Night shelter of the week counted.
2. Or the person counted has been contacted by Street Outreach of the week counted.
3. Or the person was active in an Entry / Exit shelter program within the week of the count.

Most likely the count is inflated approximately 33%, given there is a large known number of duplicates in the count. The software used ...

Churning Data into Information

I work with a lot of data on the behalf of an agency without a lot of money. Exploring free-to-use and open-source tools is key to being effective in my job.

Recently, I've written a a couple of series on how to use R and SQL to sort through Homeless Management Information System data.

• HMIS, R, and SQL
• HMIS SQL-R Script Snippets

These data are essential to local governments helping individuals experiencing homelessness to be housed quickly and appropriately.

But one area R and SQL have not delivered is on-line interactive dashboards. Data is one thing ...

I bought a few Raspberry Pi Zero W's for $10. It was happenstance I also purchased the Udemy course Learn Ethical Hacking from Scratch. I figure, I might as well put these things together.

• Raspberry Pi Zero W
• Learn Ethical Hacking from Scratch

I also discovered the Sticky Fingers Kali Pi kernel and distros put together by Re4son.

• Kali Pi

It has worked well so far. However, I've not fully tested the Bluetooth LE hardware on the custom kernel.

One of the issues I've had is not being able to connect to new hotspots headlessly. Usually, you'd boot the rp0w ...

Creating a Data Error Report by User

In this work challenge we will combine Client and Enrollment data, then we will add a non-HMIS dataframe which contains user account information. After these data are merged, we will then parse them for missing data elements and provide a by-user list of data errors.

Data Needed

As stated above, the data needed are:

1. Client.csv
2. Enrollment.csv
3. A dataframe containg HMIS user contact info.

The key to this challenge literally is at the end of every HMIS CSV. Each exported CSV contains some metadata which describes how the data were produced.

The ...

We've worked a bit with Comma Separated Values ( .csv ) files, but it they aren't the only way to store data. There are a lot of data storage formats, each with its strengths and weaknesses. One of the deficits of the CSV format is it cannot store formatting or graphs. This is the reason Excel format ( .xls or .xlsx ) has become another industry standard.

Excel is a program created by Microsoft to allow people to easily work with spreadsheets. With it, they created a way of storing data which allows for formatting and other information to be included. In fact, Excel ...

Comparative Functions

Comparing two or more values is an extremely important concept when talking to computers. In writing a report script, it is is essential. Comparisons allow us to filter to values within a range, allowing us to provide a report of relevant information.

Take the following data:

######################### Data ###################################
###################### DO NOT CHANGE #############################
peopleDf <- data.frame(PersonalID=c("ZP1U3EPU2FKAWI6K5US5LDV50KRI1LN7", "IA26X38HOTOIBHYIRV8CKR5RDS8KNGHV", "LASDU89NRABVJWW779W4JGGAN90IQ5B2"), 
           FirstName=c("Timmy", "Fela", "Sarah"),
           LastName=c("Tesa", "Falla", "Kerrigan"),
           DOB=c("2010-01-01", "1999-1-1", "1992-04-01"))
##################################################################
##################################################################

If you run the above in R you should get a dataframe called peopleDf which looks like this:

Providing Chronically Homeless List

With this work challenge we are going to take the concepts we've learned from the first challenge and build on them. We will combine two dataframes derived from Client.csv and Enrollment.csv. Then, we will apply HUD's formula to get a by-name-list of those who are chronically homeless.

Data Needed

The current definition of chronically homeless is found in HUD's federal register :

A “chronically homeless” individual is defined to mean a homeless individual with a disability who lives either in a place not meant for human habitation, a safe haven, or in an emergency shelter ...

I'm fat. Fatter than I want to be. I've not always been fat, I got down to 180 at back in 2008. It took counting calories and weight religiously. The key piece for me was having a graph which I looked at daily showing my outcomes. Over the course of a year I lost 40 pounds. Well, it's time to do it again. I've gained that 40 back over 10 years--and now it needs to go.

Back in 2008 I was using Google to give me the calories of every item I ate and recording them in an Excel document ...