Introduction to R

“Introduction to R” provides a foundation for coding with the statistical programming language R. The course is designed for applied researchers with no previous programming skills. In this course, you will learn the basics of coding in R. In particular, you will learn how to read and manipulate datasets. These skills are necessary for performing any subsequent statistical analyses in R. This course does not require any previous knowledge of statistics or programming.

Topics:

This introductory course in R covers basic data structures and routines:

• Assigning objects
• Vectors, Matrices
• Data sets
• Basic plots (using ggplot2)
• Basic functions

Application of statistical methods will be covered in the course “Introduction to Statistics”.

Methods:

The course consists of lessons how to use R and of hands-on examples with best-practice solutions.

Learning goals

Understand Basic R Syntax

• Assign values to objects and differentiate between data types (e.g., numeric, character, logical).
• Identify and use basic R data structures, such as vectors, and data frames.

Load and Understand Data Structures

• Import different kind of data sets (e.g. csv, xlsx, …).
• Inspect datasets using R functions.

Manipulate and Summarize Datasets

• Use indexing and subsetting to filter, select, and sort data.
• Run standard functions to summarize data.

Create Basic Plots

• Generate simple visualizations (e.g. scatter plots, bar charts) with ggplot2.
• Generate first ideas to customize plots with titles, labels, and colors to enhance readability.

Become Confident at Coding with R

• Write and run basic R scripts for data manipulation and visualization.
• Identify and troubleshoot common coding errors in R.

Prerequisites

No prior knowledge needed.

Target group

People with no or limited knowledge in programming with R.

This course is free of charge.