Week 1 Tools

R, RStudio, Markdown, Quarto and other tools of the trade

Description

We start the module with an applied introduction to the programming language R and the various tools that we will use to enhance its application to empirical research work in the social sciences. You will only gain a very basic and generic understanding of these software in this first week, but you will learn more throughout the semester, in the form of coding tasks associated with specific data analysis exercises.

Readings

Textbook readings

• R4DS: Chapters 1-10 (“Whole game”)

Further training

For further structured training in the use of R, RStudio and RMarkdown/Quarto, see the R for Social Scientists online course provided by Data Carpentry at https://datacarpentry.org/r-socialsci/

Jenny Bryan’s (RStudio/Posit) university-course-originated online book Stat545 is also a great resource for learning R and RStudio in more depth.

For a very different approach emphasising the value of learning ‘base’ R over the RStudio + {tidyverse} utility combo, see Norm Matloff’s course fasteR: Fast Lane to Learning R!.