Introduction to R

Course Description and Assignments

This 4-session, online, hands-on nanocourse will instruct participants to using R and RStudio. R is a simple programming environment that enables the effective handling of data, while providing excellent graphical support. RStudio is a tool that provides a user-friendly environment for working with R. After this workshop participants can expect to be comfortable with the basics of data wrangling and plotting using R.

Workshop segments will address the following:

• R syntax: Understanding the different 'parts of speech' in R; introducing variables and functions, demonstrating how functions work, and modifying arguments for specific use cases.
• Data structures in R: Getting a handle on the classes of data structures and the types of data used by R.
• Data inspection and wrangling: Reading in data from files. Using indices and various functions to subset and create datasets, including the tidyverse suite of packages.
• Visualizing data: Visualizing data using plotting functions from the external package ggplot2.
• Exporting data and graphics: Generating new data tables and plots for use outside of the R environment.

To practice concepts taught in class, participants will be given assignments to work on, between sessions. The time commitment for the assignments is approximately 2-3 hours after each session.

 

When?

• 1:00 - 3:00pm, Tuesday, August 9
• 1:00 - 3:00pm, Friday, August 12
• 1:00 - 3:00pm, Tuesday, August 16
• 1:00 - 3:00pm, Friday, August 19

Course director: Radhika S. Khetani, PhD. Director of Education and Data Management Strategy, Bioinformatics Core, HSPH

Course instructor information: Dr. Jihe Liu and Dr. William Gammerdinger, Bioinformatics Core, HSPH

 

Prerequisites

None.

 

Who should attend?

Participants should be interested in:

• learning the basics of R for reproducible data wrangling and visualizations (ggplot2)
• performing data analyses requiring a basic knowledge of R
• learning R to take an advanced workshop with us on the analysis of sequencing data in the next 6-8 months

 

Click this link to register

 

In case of questions on the content of this course, you can contact the HSPH-HBCTraining at HBCtraining@hsph.harvard.edu