Introduction to R - Practical workshop
| Audience | Computational skills required | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Biologists | Completion of IntroR online resource | 3-hour workshop (~3 hours of trainer-led time) |
Description
R is a simple programming environment that enables the effective handling of data, while providing excellent graphical support. RStudio is a tool that provides a user-friendly environment for working with R. This workshop requires prior completion of our Introduction to R online resource, developed in collaboration with Harvard Catalyst. This Introduction to R practical workshop will address questions regarding the content of the resource and provide practical exercises to practice your newly developed R skills.
Learning Objectives
- R syntax: Understanding the different ‘parts of speech’ in R; introducing variables and functions, demonstrating how functions work, and modifying arguments for specific use cases.
- Data structures in R: Getting a handle on the classes of data structures and the types of data used by R.
- Data inspection and wrangling: Reading in data from files. Using indices and various functions to subset, merge, and create datasets.
- Exporting data: Generating new data tables for use outside of the R environment.
- Visualizing data: Demonstrate the use of the ggplot2 package to create plots for easy data visualization.
Pre-requisites:
Complete all video lessons (requires Harvard Key log in) and work through all the code in the Introduction to R online resource: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/hcatrresource/
Installations
Download the most recent versions of R and RStudio:
Dataset
Download the R project and data for this workshop here. Decompress and move the folder to the location on your computer where you would like to perform the analysis.
Schedule
| Time | Topic | Instructor |
|---|---|---|
| 13:00 - 13:10 | Introduction to workshop | Radhika |
| 13:10 - 14:00 | Zoom polls, Q&A, Discussion | All |
| 14:00 - 14:15 | R practical: Functions | Emma |
| 14:15 - 14:45 | R practical: Wrangling | Radhika |
| 14:45 - 15:15 | R practical: Plotting | Emma |
| 15:15 - 15:50 | R practical: Comprehensive + Answer key | Radhika |
| 15:50 - 16:00 | Wrap-up and exit poll | Radhika |
Answer Keys:
Questions?
- If you get stuck due to an error while runnning code in the lesson, email us
- Post any conceptual questions that you would like to have reviewed in class here.
These materials have been developed by members of the teaching team at the Harvard Chan Bioinformatics Core (HBC). These are open access materials distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.