| Year | GDP per capita (US$) | Life expectancy |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 9,030 | 75.8 |
| 2020 | 7,074 | 74.5 |
| 2021 | 7,972 | 73.0 |
| 2022 | 9,281 | 74.9 |
| 2023 | 10,378 | 75.8 |
DATASCI 350 - Data Science Computing
Lecture 11 - Quarto in Practice
Today’s lecture
Last class you rendered one HTML page. Today:
- Markdown beyond the basics: tables, footnotes, maths
- PDFs, and citations formatted from a
.bibfile freeze: rendering without re-running everything- Slides (like these) and websites, published free from GitHub
- Parameterised reports: one file, one report per country
- Two exercises, so keep your laptop charged
quarto publish. You build one todayRendering Jupyter notebooks
- Quarto renders
.ipynbnotebooks as they are - Optionally, add a YAML header in a raw first cell, then run:
- By default Quarto uses the outputs stored in the notebook.
--executere-runs the code first - Python not found?
quarto check jupyterdiagnoses it; theQUARTO_PYTHONvariable fixes it - For long documents,
.qmdis nicer to write
The same notebook, rendered. More details here
PDFs
- Most journals, agencies and employers still want PDF
- PDFs go through LaTeX: TinyTeX, installed last class (
quarto install tinytex) - Then PDF is one flag:
- Notebooks too, with
--executeto re-run them:
- Fonts, margins and page size are YAML options (PDF basics guide)
Where BibTeX entries come from
- You rarely type an entry by hand
- On Google Scholar, click Cite, then BibTeX, and paste into your
.bibfile - For bigger projects, use a reference manager. Zotero is free, open source, and exports
.bibfiles that stay in sync - Check imported entries: Scholar sometimes gets capitalisation and journal names wrong
Formatting LaTeX documents
- Quarto’s default PDF looks fine, but journals and universities often want a specific look
- LaTeX templates do that. Point your YAML at one:
- My templates (articles, syllabi, letters, CVs): https://github.com/danilofreire/quarto-templates
- Use them, or find others you like 😅
Where to host slides
Both are free:
| Method | How it works | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub Pages | Enable in repo settings, serves from a branch | Permanent hosting, custom domain |
| Githack | Paste the GitHub link to any .html file |
Quick sharing, no setup |
You met GitHub Pages in module 02. With Githack, push your HTML, paste its URL at raw.githack.com and share the link
Paste a GitHub link, get a shareable URL. “Production” links cache permanently; “development” links pick up new commits within minutes
Websites
- Quarto websites are static: pre-rendered HTML, CSS and images, with no server-side code
- Fast to load, free to host, easy to version-control
- Used for course sites, documentation, portfolios, research blogs
- Free hosting on GitHub Pages, Netlify or Vercel
- No databases, logins or server logic. Those need a web framework (e.g. Flask, Django)
- More at quarto.org/docs/websites
- Example: https://www.mm218.dev/
Creating a website in VS Code
Four steps, left to right, then top to bottom:
Ctrl+Shift+P(orCmd+Shift+P), then run Quarto: Create Project- Pick Website Project from the list
- Choose a new, empty folder for it
- The project opens with
_quarto.yml,index.qmd,about.qmdandstyles.css. Click Preview
Click any screenshot to zoom in
Publishing with one command
Quarto publishes to GitHub Pages with one command:
- It renders the site and pushes it to a separate
gh-pagesbranch - Your source stays on
main, free of rendered HTML - GitHub serves it at
https://username.github.io/repo-name/ - By hand: set
output-dir: docs, render, push, and choosemain→/docsin the Pages settings. The course site works this way - To update, edit the
.qmdand run the command again
quarto publishWhat it produces
Rendered with the default, country = "Brazil":
Two of the ten countries. The report draws one, chosen by the parameter
Next class
- New topic: local language models
- How large language models work, well enough to predict their failures
- A trained model is a file you can download. We open one and read its settings
- You build a chatbot with a personality you choose
- Install Ollama before class and run
ollama pull llama3.2:1b(1.3 GB). The classroom wifi cannot handle 25 downloads at once - Keep this week’s scepticism: you will need it
Appendix 01: Solution to the first exercise
The complete practice.qmd:
---
title: "My Quarto Document"
subtitle: "A simple example"
author: "Danilo Freire"
date: "2026-09-30"
format: html
bibliography: references.bib
---
## Introduction
This is a simple Quarto document.
As @nash1950equilibrium showed, games have equilibria.
This is @fig-sine.
- One bullet
- Another bullet
| Tool | Use |
|--------|-----------------|
| Quarto | Documents |
| Git | Version control |
```{python}
#| echo: true
#| eval: true
#| fig-cap: "Sine function"
#| label: fig-sine
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
x = np.linspace(0, 10, 100)
y = np.sin(x)
plt.plot(x, y)
plt.xlabel("x")
plt.ylabel("sin(x)")
plt.show()
```Render with:
The rendered output:
Key points:
#| label: fig-sinegives the figure a cross-reference label@fig-sinein the text creates a clickable link to itbibliography: references.bibtells Quarto where to find BibTeX entries@keycites from the.bibfile; the reference list is added automatically at the end