Intermediate R Course – Online
- Start Date: October 20, 2021
- End Date: October 22, 2021
- Time: 9am-4pm Pacific Standard Time
- City: ONLINE
- Venue: You choose!
- Instructor: Dr. Isabella Ghement
- This course will be held virtually over Zoom.
Course Description
Once you start learning R, there is so much more you can learn in order to take your R skills to the next level. This 3-day course will help you expand your current R skills so they include the ability to perform a range of data preparation, R programming and automated reporting tasks. Once you master them, these tasks can save you a tremendous amount of time and allow you to create a reproducible workflow. Best of all, you can recycle the R code developed for these tasks for subsequent analyses, which will further increase your efficiency. The course will conclude with a hands-on review in order to give you a chance to apply the R concepts and commands learned in the context of a specific problem and see how everything you learned fits together.
This course may be taken on its own or in conjunction with the preceding Introductory R Course.
Testimonials from September’s Intro to R course:
“Isabella was very responsive to our learning needs and took great care to create a safe and welcoming learning environment.”
“I learned so much in this course, I am not scared of R anymore and excited to use it!”
“The course Dashboard is a great addition to the course, I like how all the course materials are easily accessed on there and was impressed by the number of resources added over the duration of the course and in the weeks following.”
The Student Dashboard is HERE. If you are registered in this course, a password will be provided to access this page.
Prerequisites
This course is aimed at biologists, ecologists and resource managers working with data who have had some basic exposure to the R programming language. Participants attending this course should be familiar with the learning outcomes of the Introductory R Course. Upon registration we will send you a pre-screening questionnaire to ensure this course is the right fit for you.
Course Structure
Day 1 – will cover Data Manipulation, Data Cleaning, Data Reshaping and Data Missingness.
Day 2 – will cover R Programming Fundamentals, including Writing Custom R Functions and Automating Repetitive Tasks.
Day 3 – will cover Automated Word and PDF Reporting with R Markdown and a Review of R Concepts and Commands Discussed During the Course.
Benefits to Participants
By the end of the course, you should be able to:
Prepare Your Data:
- Select/drop records or variables from your dataset
- Define new variables or rename old variables
- Clean variable names and/or values
- Change the type of a variable (e.g., from character to date)
- Extract various date components (e.g., year, month, day of year)
- Explore and characterize data missingness
- Reshape a dataset from wide to long format or vice versa
Program in R:
- Understand the structure of R data objects and R functions
- Manipulate various types of R data objects
- Write versatile R functions
- Perform repetitive data analysis tasks efficiently
Write automated reports:
- Create automated Word and PDF reports which include tabular and graphical output produced by your data analyses and make your work reproducible
Who should attend?
Biologists and ecologists looking for a deeper knowledge of data processing, programming and reporting in R will find this Intermediate R Course helpful.
Instructor
Your course instructor will be Dr. Isabella Ghement. Isabella graduated with a PhD in Statistics from the University of British Columbia in 2005 and has since worked as an independent statistical consultant and R trainer. She has taught numerous R courses to researchers, graduate students, government agencies and corporations in Canada, always with the goal to help the course participants build confidence in their R skills and feel encouraged to learn even more about R, and also lectured part-time on advanced statistics at the Sauder School of Business, UBC between 2005 and 2012. Isabella is actively engaged in statistical consulting through her company Ghement Statistical Consulting Company Ltd. Her statistical consulting clients include federal and provincial government agencies, contract research organizations and academic researchers.
Required software
- R and Rstudio
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Word
- Adobe Reader
Preparation for the course
If you have a small laptop, consider using an external keyboard and a mouse during the course as this will facilitate typing R commands. An additional monitor is also highly recommended, especially for the online version of this course.
You will also need to ensure that you have a working microphone and camera to participate in the videoconferencing system.
This course will take place via Zoom. You do not need to purchase a Zoom account for yourself, you just need to ensure you have the free application downloaded to your computer. Here are some instructions to get you set up.
Course Materials:
Approximately one week prior to the course, you will receive an email that will provide you with access to:
- Instructions on how to load the required software (i.e., R and R Studio). Both R and R Studio are available for Mac, Linux and Windows systems. During the course, you will need to use your own laptop or PC pre-loaded with the required software and course materials.
- PowerPoint course notes
- Data sets and R script files
- Handouts
- The associated Zoom links and passwords you’ll need to join the “meeting.”
Registration
Course registration includes 30 days of free course-related technical support from the course instructor via e-mail. A maximum of 15 students may register for this course, register early to secure your seat.
Registration for the preceding Introductory R Course with Isabella Ghement may be done at the same time as you register for this course.
CMI Member: $675.00*
Non-member: $720.00
*You can purchase your $40 membership at the same time as you register. See more about membership here.
Registration closed
