As usual, let’s go straight to his website:
Below is the introduction from his homepage:
I’m a software engineer working at RStudio, PBC. I earned my PhD from the Department of Statistics, Iowa State University. My thesis was Dynamic Graphics and Reporting for Statistics, advised by Di Cook and Heike Hofmann. I have developed a few R packages either seriously or for fun (or both), such as knitr, animation, bookdown, blogdown, pagedown, xaringan, and tinytex. I founded a Chinese website called “Capital of Statistics” in 2006, which has grown into a large online community on statistics. I initiated the Chinese R conference in 2008. I’m a big fan of GitHub, LyX and Pandoc. I hate IE. I fall asleep when I see beamer slides, and I yell at people who use \\textbf{} to write \\title{}. I know I cannot eat code, so I cook almost every day to stay away from my computer for two hours.
This is Yihui Xie’s personal homepage. At the end of 2013, I graduated from the Department of Statistics at the Ames Village University, finally answering the most frequently asked question of my first 30 years: “How come you haven’t graduated yet?” I currently work at RStudio. I support open-source, enjoy tinkering with websites and code, and am a highly self-driven person. In badminton, I love cross-court drops; in table tennis, I play like Tai Chi; in tennis, I chase balls all over the court; in basketball, I get knocked around easily; and after one rock climbing session, my legs turned to jelly. I’m a homebody with a taste for strong, spicy flavors—stubbornly unrepentant. My IQ is slightly below average, and I have an insurmountable cognitive barrier when it comes to mahjong and Sanguosha. I was once woken up by a professor during a real analysis class. I enjoy reading, occasionally browsing random posts online, and have a particular interest in poetry and couplets. My current favorite couplet is:
“A thousand autumns distant, I alone remain;
After a hundred battles, I return to books again.”
My favorite poem is:
“Deep as the sea is my affection—
When we first met, what age were we?
Vaguely I still remember now,
It wasn’t in a past life’s decree.
After school, before the flowers,
Poems carved on stone by the stream,
In the garden pavilion where spring waters gleam.
Meeting you with a smile—
No joy in this world could ever compare.”
Helplessly watching the clouds drift like grey hounds, counting the calamities of red sheep,
Vague and weary, no need to bring it up.
Superficial airs grow, genuine spirit wanes,
Drowning the heart and soul—how much longer?
Eternal fame, the burdens of a lifetime,
Every matter strays from its original intent.
Locked within the heart,
That childhood flavor lingers on.