Chapter 5 Finding Help

5.1 Workshop Video

You can view the recording from the workshop video below.

5.2 Creating a GitHub account

You will need this during the installation module, but you should go ahead and create your own GitHub account now.

5.3 How to ask a question

Inevitably, at some point your knowledge will exceed that presented in these modules (which is great!) or I have done a poor job explaining something (not so great). Either way, you will be on the hunt to find information on the interwebs. One of the biggest strengths of R is its massive community. However, there are a few steps I try to follow before asking a question

5.3.1 Google

I cannot stress this enough, try searching for your solution online. Good sources can be found on

  1. GitHub (for the package you are having issues with)
  2. StackOverflow
  3. Community.RStudio.com
  4. Review the package documentation
    • Packages released on CRAN will also have a PDF file which describes its inner workings (Here is an example with the janitor package)

Even if you can’t find a full solution to your problem attempt to fix a small percentage, leaving only the issues you were unable to find solutions for before posting a question

5.3.2 Asking a Question

Before you ask a question, consider how you are going to ask it. It’s important to remember that you are asking for help, be courteous and spend some time adding all the relevant, required information so the individual behind the screen on the other end of the internet can understand you. This is where the concept of “reprex” comes in. Which stands for “minimal reproducible example.

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("tidyverse/reprex")

  1. I would highly recommend reading the page on the reprex package.

  2. You can also read about reprex on the tidyverse page

  3. Do’s and don’t of asking questions

  4. Reproducible examples on StackOverflow

  5. GitHub

5.5 Andrew’s Additions

Website to convert YouTube videos to Markdown syntax