2 Introduction and Setup

9/12/2022

2.1 What is programming and how will you use it?

Programming is essentially you telling the computer to do something using a language it can understand.

You will use programming extensively to conduct your research throughout your career.

R is a special purpose language used by researchers and data scientists the world over to conduct statistical research
R was designed to do stats - many of its functions are built around this idea
R can do much more than just stats, especially when coupled with RStudio
- Shiny: analytics dashboards and websites
- Markdown: Latex documents directly from R (including graphics and data)

Python: you may find Python to be more useful in certain situations in your career or simply like writing it in better.
- I have found R to be more useful to my research though because of the extensive libraries created by the R community
C/C++: the bigger the data or the more complex the mathematical operation, you may find it necessary
- In general, C++ is more difficult to use when testing an idea or performing a simple analysis (read: unnecessary)
- R and C/C++ are actually intimately tied together, as many R functions are actually written in C/C++

R has some limitations…

R has a very steep learning curve and can be difficult for new users to get going and feel comfortable
R does everything IN MEMORY, meaning it will eat your RAM
R is slow relative to other programming languages for certain tasks
R can be more difficult to use for parallel computing tasks, but it can be done and is efficient

R has lots of great qualities though!

For graphics, R is hard to beat and is arguably the best language around
R has the best and largest community of contributors in Academia
- Contributor produce the libraries you will use to do much of your analysis and no other language really comes close for statistical or mathematical computing
R is great for coding mathematical functions
R is an interpreted language which makes it great for exploring your data, creating/test new analyses and approaches, and for iterating new code

First we have to install base R before we do anything else. Follow the download at this url: http://cran.wustl.edu/

You will need accounts with the following online platforms:

This class is meant to be helpful, not stressful
Often times what you learn in 811 will be directly relatable to what you are doing in 812 and other courses

Learning how to Google well and interpret what you see is the most important thing to learn early on!

Among hundreds…