Introduction to R

Instructors

• Renato Alves (Gibson/Bio-IT)
• Florian Huber (Typas/Beltrao)
• Thea Van Rossum (Bork)

Course Overview

The statistical programming language, R, has become one of the most popular open source tools for biological data analysis. Libraries such as the Tidyverse and Bioconductor allow users to import, process, and analyse large volumes of data, and produce publication-grade visualisations of the results.

Taught by the founders of emblr, a bi-weekly series of tutorial sessions for EMBL’s R user community, this course aims to provide an introduction to the language and the essential suite of tools learners will need to begin performing their own analyses with R. The material will focus on good practices for working with tabular data, and participants can expect to leave with an understanding of the central concepts and how they might apply them to their own biological data analysis.

During this course, learners will follow prepared online material individually or in small groups. Instructors will be available throughout the course to answer questions and discuss challenging topics both individually and with the whole group.

The course will take place on Zoom over four consecutive mornings. Participants should log into this site using their standard EMBL credentials and register via the form below. Registered participants will then receive connection details closer to the starting date. (Registration will open shortly.)

Planned Daily Schedule

09:00 Introduction (all days) and overview of challenges from yesterday (days 2-4)
09:30 Self-directed learning in small groups
10:30 Break
10:45 Self-directed learning in small groups
12:00 End

Prerequisites

The course is intended for those with no previous experience of R programming, though those with some experience but who are unfamiliar with the "tidyverse" suite of packages (dplyr, readr, purrr, ggplot2, etc) may also find it useful. Some prior experience of working with tabular data (e.g. in a spreadsheet) would be beneficial. Before joining the course, participants should install RStudio or, if they already have it installed, ensure that their version of R is up-to-date. Further setup instructions will follow closer to the start of the course.

Contact

If you have any questions about the course, please contact Bio-IT.

Please log in with your standard EMBL username and password before you register. Note also that course participants are required to have a (free) Zoom account in order to be able to join the course.

Bookings