Unit 1: Getting StaRted

In this unit, you will become familiar with the R console, RStudio, and basic actions and operations in R.

Follow the links to each lecture, lab, and reading.

Scroll down to download the SWIRL lessons.

Lesson 1. What is R?

Lecture: Overview of R, demonstration of R.

Learning Goals:

• Understand what R can and cannot do,
• Install R and RStudio,
• Know how to navigate within RStudio.

Lab: Unit 1: Lab 1

Functions: None.

Lesson 2. How to use R as a calculator

Lectures:

• Working with R and RStudio

• How to use SWIRL

Learning Goals:

• Perform operations on numbers and integers,
• Assign numeric and character data to variables,
• Manipulate variables with operators,
• Understand and use paths and working directories.

SWIRL: Basic building blocks

Lab: Unit 1: Lab 2

Reading:

• How a computer works

• Working directories

Functions: <-, getwd(), setwd().

Lesson 3. How to work with vectors

Lecture: Types of data and data structures

Learning Goals:

• Generate vectors using c(), :, seq(), rep(),
• Assign these vectors to variables and manipulate them,
• Identify types of vectors (numeric, integer, factor, character, …)
• Plot individual vectors with plot().

SWIRL:

• Vectors and Sequences

• Subsetting Vectors

Best Practice: Code style guide

Labs:

• Unit 1: Lab 3

• Code style lab

Functions: c(), :, seq(), rep(), plot(), is.vector(), etc

Lesson 4. How to summarise vectors

Lecture: Using functions

Learning Goals:

• Navigate to and from working directory with getwd() and setwd(),
• Subset vectors with logical statements (>, <, !=, ==),
• Use functions to perform calculations, with sum(), mean(), sd(), etc.
• Summarise the distribution of a vector with boxplot() and hist().

SWIRL:

• Summarizing Data

• Understanding Factors

Lab: Unit 1: Recap

Functions: getwd(), setwd(), sum(), mean(), sd(), summary(), length(), boxplot(), hist()

SWIRL

The lessons we will use are available online and you need to download them to your laptop.

1. Open RStudio

2. In the console panel, next to the arrow (>), copy and paste the following:

library(swirl)
install_course_github("intro2r", "swirl_courses", multi = TRUE)

This will download the most up-to-date lessons.

To start the lesson, type

swirl()

Updated 2018-08-29