R Programming Foundations for Data Analysis

Description

The course is addressed to individuals with little or no experience in programming but who are enthusiastic about learning how to use R for data analysis and streamline their work.

The course covers fundamental concepts of programming and software design focusing on programming in R. We will go through various aspects of R scripting. After introductory lectures on good programming practices, basic software design theory and a brief overview of R, we will delve into programming. We start by learning how to use R as a basic calculator, what are variable types, how to use data structures, how to implement repeating actions with and without loops, and how to take actions based on certain conditions. We gradually proceed to loading data, importing data from common file formats, some basic matrix algebra and learning how to perform basic statistical tests and visualize results.

You will learn how to document your work and how to generate automatic reports using real-life datasets. During the course you will also be working on a small dataset to apply knowledge you learnt in the course and will present that in a report format towards the end of the workshop.

Topics covered

• Variables and Operators
• Matrices, lists, and dataframes
• Data manipulation
• Visualization
• R packages
• Bioconductor

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Describe different data structures commonly used in R.
• Work with different data types.
• Import and export data from and to R environment.
• Manipulate data.
• Work with dataframes and lists.
• Visualize the data.
• Use R Markdown to create reports containing text, code, tables and/or figures

Pre-requisites

Good general computer literacy is expected, but no previous experience in programming or R is required. You are expected to know basic concepts in mathematics and statistics, but the emphasis of the course is to learn how to use R.

Participants are expected to use their own computers with pre-installed R and R Studio (detailed instructions will be given upon acceptance).

Level

beginner