1. Purpose of group
2. Our tools: Languages/software we will learn
3. Examples of coding applications for speech
4. Download R, RStudio, Praat
5. Intro to RStudio
6. Topics for the term

• Develop skills that make it easier to do our job well as speech researchers
• Create a community that comes together to make it easier to learn this stuff

Computer Coding: Writing something in a language a computer can understand in order to tell the computer to do a specific thing or set of things.

Why bother telling a computer what to do when we can just do it ourselves?

Why bother telling a computer what to do when we can just do it ourselves?

• Automate repetitive tasks like…
  • opening/closing/saving files
• Minimize human error in data preparation
  • Renaming things in a spreadsheet
• Keep a careful log of how we did our analyses
  • Code = instructions
• “Reproducible research”
• Fun! (seriously!)

• Website: https://casa-lab.com/coding-group/
• Slack channel: https://casa-lab-ub.slack.com/
  • Invite to join Slack channel (I will send this out via email after today)

Coding: Writing in a language a computer can understand

Scripting: A type of coding that tells a specific program exactly what actions to take

Programming: Writing code that serves to actually create another program (an app, software, etc)

Scripts: Text files containing code.

• Scripting, coding, and programming are sometimes used interchangeably

Functions: A certain named format of code that outlines a procedure. Often this allows several lines of code to be executed with a single line of code (by using the name of the function)

• For example, in Excel, you may use functions like =sum(2,2). sum() is the function that takes input (in this case, numbers), and performs an a specific action (adds them).

Calling: Invoke a function by using the name of the function and specifying parameters.

• For example: I “call the sum function” when I type it out with its inputs and execute it in excel.

1. R and R Studio
2. Praat

• “R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.”
• Download here

• RStudio is a handy interface that helps you use R.
• Download Desktop version

• “Doing phonetics by computer”: Praat is a powerful software program that also has its own specialized language for writing scripts
• Praat = “Speech” in Dutch
• Looks like it hasn’t been updated since 1995 but it has and it’s great
• “World’s worst programming language”
  • don’t let the haters get you down
• Download here

Example: Starbucks data

1. Start with a data set you have in Excel
2. “Read” it into R
3. Do things to it like…

• Instantly calculate means values

Let’s look together