Day 1
A) Set up your computer:
- Download and install OR update the R base system to the latest version for your OS.
- Install OR update to the latest version of R studio Desktop for your OS, to work with R’s base system.
- Check your R setup:
- Open RStudio
- On the console, type the command
R.Version() - This will display some information; teh last few lines of the output will display the version of R you have installed, the latest as of Jan 21, 2023 is:
$version.string [1] "R version 4.2.2 (2022-10-31)" $nickname [1] "Innocent and Trusting" - If you have any issues with installation, contact the instructors or attend office hours previous to the in-class session.
B) Complete the pre-lecture R survey
- Please complete the R survey by answering the questions on this google form.
C) Read and prepare for in-class discussion the text “Before We Start”:
- what is R?
- what is Rstudio?
- what is reproducibility?
- why is r good for reproducibility?
- what are other benefits of R?
- What are the main panes of the Rstudio IDE?
- Why is it a good practice to set up a working directory?
- What is the R workspace?
Day 2
D) Read and prepare for discussion Best Practices for Scientific Computing:
- According to the paper, how much of their time do researchers spend coding?
- How do the majority of researchers learn programming?
- List some basic software development practices.
- List down any concepts or words from the paper that you did not know of, along with their definitions.
- For each number in
Box 1. Summary of Best Practices, identify the best practices that you have implemented in the past, in general and for this class.
E) Optional - extra points Watch the videos listed below. Open a new R file and as you watch the videos, follow along with the instructor and type down and run the code that is being demoed on the video. Watching all videos takes ~ 55 min. Hint: Watch the videos with a higher reproduction speed to save some time:
- 7min Intro to R and Rstudio
- 8min 14s Expressions and variables in R
- 8min Using functions video
- 8min 40s Basic vectors
- 4min 44s Null values
- 8min 54sWorking with Multiple Vectors in R