Session Plan

These sessions serve as a roadmap, offering a glimpse into the topics we believe are essential for our club. Please note, this itinerary is not set in stone; we aim for flexibility rather than adherence to a strict sequence. Our goal is to adapt the content and order of sessions based on the group’s progress, interests, and feedback.

Session 1: Introduction to R, RStudio, and Package Management

April 26, 2024 at 10:30 am via Zoom

Objective

Familiarize participants with the R environment, RStudio interface, and the basics of package management.

Topics

  • Overview of R and its importance in data analysis.
  • Installing R and RStudio; navigating the RStudio interface.
  • Working in projects
  • Basic R syntax: variables, data types, and simple operations.
  • Understanding R packages, installing and loading them using install.packages() and library().
  • Exploring package documentation.

Activity

Install R and RStudio, execute basic R commands, install a package (e.g., tidyverse), and explore its documentation.

Session 2: Data Manipulation with Tidyverse

April 31, 2024 at 10:30 am via Zoom

Objective

Introduce the Tidyverse suite for data manipulation and visualization, focusing on dplyr, including reshaping data with pivot_longer() and pivot_wider().

Topics

  • Brief overview of the Tidyverse packages.
  • Data manipulation with dplyr (filtering, selecting, mutating, summarizing, and grouping).
  • Reshaping data with pivot_longer() and pivot_wider().

Activity

Participants will use dplyr to manipulate a dataset, and practice reshaping data.

Session 3: Introduction to Reproducible Reports with R Markdown and Quarto

Objective:

Introduce the concept of reproducible research and reports using R Markdown and Quarto.

Topics:

  • What is R Markdown and Quarto?
  • Creating a simple report integrating R code and narrative text.
  • Exporting reports to different formats (HTML, PDF, Word).

Activity

Create a basic R Markdown document that includes text, code, and outputs.

Session 4: Data Visualization with ggplot2 and Creating Tables

Objective

Expand on basic ggplot2 usage and introduce methods for creating well-formatted tables for reports.

Topics

  • Advanced data visualization techniques with ggplot2.
  • Customizing plots to improve readability and aesthetics.
  • Creating tables with gtsummary, andgt

Activity

Create a visualization that tells a story about a dataset. Generate a report including a well-formatted table.

Session 5: Version Control with GitHub

Objective

Introduce the concept of version control and how to use GitHub for project management and collaboration.

Topics:

  • Basics of version control and why it’s important.
  • Setting up a GitHub account and understanding the GitHub interface.
  • Creating repositories, committing changes, and understanding the workflow (clone, add, commit, push).
  • Collaborating on projects (forks, branches, pull requests).

Activity:

Create a new repository on GitHub and practice making commits and pushing changes.

Session 6: Creating Websites with Quarto

Objective:

Teach participants how to create and publish websites using Quarto, an open-source scientific and technical publishing system built on Pandoc.

Topics:

  • Creating static websites with Quarto and customizing the layout and appearance.
  • Publishing a Quarto website on GitHub Pages.

Activity:

Participants will create a simple website using Quarto that includes text, code outputs, and visualizations, and then publish it on GitHub Pages.