The apprentice novel, or initiatory novel, is a literary genre whose theme is the journey of a hero, often young, who gradually achieves the ideal of the accomplished human, experiencing the great events of existence: love, otherness, frustration, etc. The story participants are about to tell as is their stories : the years they spent gradually learning about data science: the love of R, his alterity = their communities, the frustration of not seeing everything the world has to offervat the exciting evolution of statistical software.