webscraping

Big data, big problems

Webscraping with R: An Introduction

Recently, I was invited by Prof. Dr. Henning Lohmann to talk about “Webscraping with R” at the Department of Socioeconomics (University of Hamburg, UHH). Among other things, I discussed the perils and promises of digital research, the infrastructure of the web, and how to implement a webscraping project using R. The (German) slides are available below. After the presentation, the participants and I dug into several examples, which I also made available on my GitHub.

A comparison of German health insurance supplemental premia

Admittedly, the post at hand emerged from a very plain issue. In Germany, statutory health insurances charge a supplemental premium which differs between the respective providers. Recently, my current provider increased its’ premium and I was confronted with the option to switch to a potentially less expensive one. To make an informed decision, I tried to compare the supplemental premia across providers available at my place of residence (Berlin). Data on the respective premia are available at the website of the “National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds”.