Computational and Technical Research Lab (CRTL)
The Computational and Technical Research Lab (CTRL) is led by Alejandro Venable-Croft in the Collins Lab. CTRL meets on a monthly basis allowing a volunteering student to present a coding challenge and facilitate group discussion. Technical resources, Virginia Tech proprietary and external, are also discussed. Some VT organizational resources of note are the Advanced Computer Computing Center (ARC), tutorials from the Technology-Enhanced and Online Strategies (TLOS) group, and the Statistical Applications and Innovations Group (SAIG).
Recent Issue - Classification Error due to Floating Point Math
The Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) is a widely used classification system for motor vehicle crash injuries. An example of labeling AIS codes belonging to distal tibia fractures is shown on the right. The seq() function in R was used to check if an AIS code was in a sequence of numbers uniquely spanning the codes for distal tibia fractures. At a glance, it seems this sequence will correctly identify distal tibia fractures, but not explicitly specifying the categories led to cases with distal tibia fractures being misclassified. Ideally, categorical variables should be represented as factors in R, not floats, which can avoid this issue altogether.
