Overview

Introduction to R, RStudio and project organisation

This week you will start writing R code in RStudio and will create your first graph! You will learn about data types such as “numerics” and “characters” and some of the different types of objects in R such as “vectors” and “dataframes”. These are the building blocks for the rest of your R journey. You will also learn a workflow and about the layout of RStudio and using RStudio Projects.

An organized kitchen with sections labeled 'tools', 'report' and 'files', while a monster in a chef's hat stirs in a bowl labeled 'code.'

Artwork by Horst (2023): “bless this workflow”

Learning objectives

The successful student will be able to:

  • use the R command line as a calculator and to assign variables
  • create and use the basic data types in R
  • find their way around the RStudio windows
  • use an RStudio Project to organise work
  • use a script to run R commands
  • create and customise a barplot
  • search and understand manual pages

Instructions

  1. Prepare

    1. First Steps in RStudio: Either 📖 Read the book OR 📹 Watch two videos

  2. Workshop

    i.💻 🐈 Coat colour of cats. Type in some data, perform calculations on, and plot it.

  3. Consolidate

    1. 💻 Create a plot

    2. 📖 Read Workflow in RStudio

References

Horst, Allison. 2023. “Data Science Illustrations.” https://allisonhorst.com/allison-horst.