Intro to R

This is a workshop that I’ve run in various capacities at the University of Waterloo, Rotman Research Institute, and BrainHack School. All content is subject to change!

Workshop Overview:

R can feel like dark sorcery. Formulae chained together by eldritch symbols, scripts shared in hushed tones. This workshop aims to demystify R by walking through some first steps of what R and RStudio are; good habits to keep your code clean; and best practices for wrangling and visualising your data. No prior experience with R or coding is necessary. While learning R may not always spark joy, it will be life-changing!

Workshop Objectives:

In taking this workshop, you’ll learn (1) first steps, like understanding an R project’s file structure and the anatomy of an R script, (2) good habits, like commenting and naming conventions, (3) best practices, like using the tidyverse and pipe notation.

Attendee Requirements:

Optional, but strongly recommended: Up-to-date version of R (https://cloud.r-project.org/) and RStudio (https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/)