R tutorial

R tutorial

This is a hub for a first introduction to R, for students of one of my workshops or courses. I have subdivided the material into (somewhat) independent learning units that you can work through at your own pace, but in sequence.

The units have Deliverables and Prerequisites - please ignore these sections, they are for use in a more formal course setting.

You need to work through these units before you come to the workshop. There are two reasons:

• (i) installation of software is very specific to your computer and we can't walk you through this in a room full of people. It would take so much time that we won't get anything else done.
• (ii) When you are working with R - like with any computer language or natural language, the key is repetition, repetition, repetition. The more you prime yourself with this material, the more you will profit when we actually meet in class. I hope to see everyone radiant and elated, and not lost before we even begin. Let's do this!

The Units

 

Start with this

• Set up your computer for biocomputing work

 

Install R and make sure everything works

• Installing R and RStudio
• Setup
• The "Console"
• Getting Help

 

Explore how to get R to work with data

• R Syntax
• Vectors
• Data frames
• Lists

 

The one unit that will save your ***, over and over again

• Subsetting and Filtering

 

First steps towards programming

• Subsetting and Filtering
• Control structures
• Functions

 

Maybe optional? Meh, just work through this anyway, as time permits. It'll be on the exam.

• Subsetting and Filtering
• First Plots
• Coding Style

 

Notes

 

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