Chapter 1 Start Here

Hi everyone, this is the starting point. I used this class as a way to force myself to learn R and I am glad that I did. I was skeptical of R for years, I tried to learn it before and was like this sucks. Impenetrable. I think the book we’re going to use helps with that, but also the community aspect is super important. Try the stuff and if you run into a problem ask our little community on StackOverflow. In fact, as soon as you encounter I want you to post on there. If you find a solution to your problem before anyone else just answer your own question. It’s a good habit for us to get into.

As I write this I don’t really know R……and that’s ok! I know a bit, enough to know it’s valuable, and I think you should have that experience too.

The thing I like most about R is the agency it provides you. R talks to many other coding languages. You don’t have to purchase it. Your employer doesn’t have to purchase it. It’s powerful as hell. It has a cool community that continues to make new programs for the language. Data analysis jobs focused on R pay GOOD MONEY for entry level positions. Grad schools like it. It is worth your time.

1.1 Your Book

This is the primary book we will be using, bookmark it so you have easy access.

People love making shit in R, so there are lots of books and resources on how to use R….that people have made in R…..you get the picture. I like this one for super beginner-y stuff. There will be things we need to ignore and I will try to point them out and if there is a better resource I will point you to it or you can suggest stuff on our StackOverflow page. I have compiled a basic list in the references section, feel free to check them out.

We will primarily chat via StackOverflow or Slack ( i have linked mine but I haven’t spent much time with Slack at all).

After you complete each chapter please post to StackOverflow what was most difficult for you and any questions you may have using the tags “Ch2”, “Ch3”, “Ch4” etc.

1.2 Weekly Schedule

Week To Do
Aug. 22 - Aug. - 26 Complete Ch 2 and 3
Aug. 29 - Sept 2 Complete Ch 4
Sept. 5 - Sept. 9 Complete Ch 5
Sept. 12 - Sept. 16 Complete Ch 6
Sept. 21 - Sept. 23 Complete Ch 7
Sept. 26 - Sept. 30 Complete Ch 8
Oct. 03 - Oct. 07 Complete Ch 9
Oct. 10 - Oct. 14 Complete Ch 10
Oct. 17 - Oct. 21 Complete Ch 11
Oct. 24 - Oct. 28 Complete Ch 12
Nov. 1 - Nov. 4 Working with real data
Nov. 07 - Nov. 11 Working with real data
Nov. 14 - Nov. 18 Working with real data
Nov. 21 - Nov. 25 Creating reports
Nov. 28 - Dec. 02 Creating reports
Dec. 05 - Dec. 09 Creating reports

1.3 Other resources

1.3.1 Books

Learning Statistcics with R As the title suggests this book is more focused on statistics, but the author sometimes give more detail about R stuff. So, I think it’s a great book but it’s not as friendly for first time users or people who may have much knowledge about statistics.

Hands-On Programming with R This is like……BARE BONES r shit. Like…..they don’t even use the Wickam 6. You program a dice and learn how to create datasets WITHIN R which is definitely useful, but it’s not as immediately useful as our book.

R Markdown: The Definitive Guide We use R Markdown a lot in this class, this book is ONLY about R Markdown. It’s super useful for doign cool stuff….but it’s a bit beyond us right now.

Analysis This is the second book in the series we are working with. It rehashes a lot of stuff we worked on, but with far less hand holding while also doing statistical tests.

1.3.2 Cheatsheets and How-to’s

Glossary of Terms and Symbols This is a glossary of common terms the textbooks use that you may want to look up to remind yourself every now and again. You’re learning new vocab and jargon, we should get practice using the proper language.

R Cookbook 2nd Edition This resource will be useful to you. It’s basically a FAQ for R stuff. It is organized in a question-answer format. The difficulty is that you don’t really know how to ask questions yet. There is a certain degree of competence necessary to use the book, but by the time we finish it should be pretty useful.

ggplot Cookbook This is a cookbook, similar to the one above, but specific to graph making in ggplot.

Cheatsheets This is the homepage for a whole pile of cheatsheets. These are basically one big image of simple code for specific programs like ggplot2, tidyr, etc. Sometimes I find these clunky and not helpful, but perhaps once you understand everything very well they will be more useful.