R for Novices

an introduction to R for non-programmers using gapminder data

The goal of this lesson is to give novice programmers a foundation in the fundamentals of R for data analysis.

Note that this workshop will focus on teaching the fundamentals of the programming language R, and will not teach statistical analysis.

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.

Prerequisites

Understand that computers store data and instructions (programs, scripts etc.) in files. Files are organised in directories (folders). Know how to access files not in the working directory by specifying the path.

Schedule

Setup Download files required for the lesson
00:00 1. Introduction to R and RStudio How to find your way around RStudio?
How to interact with R?
How to manage your environment?
How to install packages?
00:55 2. Data Structures How can I read data in R?
What are the basic data types in R?
How do I represent categorical information in R?
01:50 3. Exploring Data Frames How can I manipulate a data frame?
02:10 4. Subsetting Data How can I work with subsets of data in R?
02:45 5. Control Flow How can I make data-dependent choices in R?
How can I repeat operations in R?
03:30 6. Vectorization How can I operate on all the elements of a vector at once?
03:40 7. Writing Data How can I save plots and data created in R?
03:50 Finish

The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.