About this course
An introduction to R for non-programmers
Last updated
An introduction to R for non-programmers
Last updated
The goal of this workshop is to teach novice programmers to write code in R for data analysis. R is commonly used in many scientific disciplines for statistical analysis and its array of third-party packages. The emphasis of these materials is to give attendees a strong foundation in the fundamentals of R, and to teach them how to use the packages from Tidyverse to manipulate, analyse and visualise data.
Note that this workshop will focus on teaching the fundamentals of the programming language R, and will not teach statistical analysis. If you would like help with your statistical analysis, you can contact the Statistical Consulting Centre for one-on-one consultations statistical training courses.
A variety of third party packages are used throughout this workshop. These are not necessarily the best, nor are they comprehensive, but they are packages we find useful, and have been chosen primarily for their usability.
Use the RStudio interface effectively
Understand the different data types and structures used in R
Import, manipulate and clean data
Obtain simple summary statistics from data
Visualise data in a meaningful and elegant way
Generate reproducible analysis of quantitative data using statistical and visualisation tools
Adapt existing computational methods and tools to complete a target task
Engage with unfamiliar data problems and identify relevant solution strategies to solve them
This course is aimed at novice users of R and Rstudio - those who have never picked up the tools before, and those who may have used them in the past, but would like a refresher.
This workshop is accessible to everyone. We encourage non-coders and people from different backgrounds and skills to register for the training. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.
For those with no previous programming experience, we recommend consulting the course materials for introduction to programming concepts prior to attending the current workshop.
This course will be taught through a series of online workshops, as well as self-guided learning through this GitBook while we're engaged in the virtual campus model. If you get stuck and need extra pointers, shoot an email to r.unimelb@gmail.com.
This course is designed to get you into the Rstudio environment and working with it as you learn. To do this you will need:
A laptop running Windows 10 or macOS X
An internet connection (although if you've made it this far, that shouldn't be a problem)
A copy of R and RStudio installed on your laptop - don't worry, we're about to show you how to set that up on the next page.