Intro to R Workshop Series, Fall 2023

R is a powerful open-source statistics platform and programming language widely used in many disciplines. The R community has produced thousands of packages (add-ons) that expand its capabilities and have made it the data analysis tool of choice in many fields including the biological sciences, economics, social sciences, statistics, etc.

R's command line interface however can make for a steep learning curve that makes R a little intimidating for beginners. This three-part workshop series is designed to help newcomers get up to speed using R, and refresh skills for people who skills might be a little rusty.

Outline

Part 1: Getting Started
Wednesday, Sept. 27, 10:00a - 12:00p

• getting around RStudio
• R as a fancy calculator
• syntax rules
• saving results to variables
• calling functions
• getting help
• working in scripts
• data types
• descriptive stats
• basic plots

Part 2: Packages, Functions, and Importing Data
Wednesday, Oct. 4, 10:00a - 12:00p

• using packages
• piping syntax
• managing files and folders
• importing CSV files
• data frames

Part 3: Data Wrangling
Wednesday, Oct. 11, 10:00a - 12:00p

• importing tips and tricks
• tidy data
• manipulating rows and columns
• joining tables
• reshaping data

Part 4: Automation and ggplot
Wednesday, Oct. 18, 10:00a - 12:00p

• working with text
• loops and branches
• working with dates
• anatomy of a ggplot
• geom functions

Audience: 

• UC Cooperative Extension
• UC students & faculty
• AIFS affiliates (including Davis, Berkeley, Cornell, U. Illinois, & USDA)

Cost: This is a free workshop series

Requirements:

No experience necessary. People with some R experience are welcome to start with workshop #2, but will be expected to know the basics (e.g., working with RStudio, writing R commands in scripts, basic syntax, installing packages, etc.).

This hands-on workshop will use RStudio running in a virtual machine from Posit Cloud (i.e., in a browser). All participants will therefore need to create a free account on Posit Cloud. Additional info will be provided the week before the workshop.

Parts of the workshop will require you to follow along as the instructor types code to solve a problem. It is therefore highly recommended that you join the workshop on a computer with two monitors, so you can view the instructor's screen on one monitor, and work in RStudio in the other. Alternately you could use two computers, or one big monitor large enough for multiple windows. Participants who only have a small laptop with no external monitor may find it challenging to complete the hands-on exercises, and may just want to watch.

Registration:

Click here to register.

This course content is the result of a collaborative effort between UC ANR IGIS Statewide Program, the USDA-NIFA/NSF AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems (AIFS), and the UC Berkeley Geospatial Innovation Facility (GIF).

For information regarding other upcoming IGIS workshops, please see IGIS training or contact Sean Hogan at sdhogan@ucanr.edu