Online Program

Outline & Objectives (302582)

Course Outline:

· Overview of R. This segment will introduce the participants to the R environment and teach them how to manage their R working space (e.g., set their working directory, clear their working space).

· Data Import/Export. This segment will briefly walk the participants through the ins and out of importing data into R. Participants will learn how to import text file and comma delimited files into R via commands such as read.table and read.csv, and will be given additional resources on how to import more complex data files into R.

· Basic R Graphics. This segment will introduce the participants to the base graphical system in R. Participants will learn how to use R to create standard statistical graphs such as bar plots, histograms, boxplots, scatterplots and time series plots. They will also learn how to enhance these plots through the addition of titles, labels, legends, text annotations, colors and symbols.

· Advanced R Graphics. This segment will introduce the participants to the lattice graphical system in R. First, participants will learn how to use the formulas underlying the lattice system to reproduce the graphs created by the base graphical system. Next, participants will learn how to modify these formulas to create multi-panel plots and 3-D plots.

· R Graphics Housekeeping. In this segment, the participants will learn how to write, comment and save scripts documenting R graphics commands and how to export R graphics in a variety of formats that can easily be embedded in reports and presentations.

Course Scope: This course is intended for anyone who wishes to learn how to use the powerful open source statistical software package R to produce publication-quality graphics. The course requires no previous knowledge of R. The course will use a variety of training instruction tools (e.g., presentations, demos, discussion, hands-on exercises) to engage participants in active learning of R. To get the most out of this course, participants will need to bring their own laptops to the course, preinstalled with R.

Course Objectives: The overarching objective of this course is to teach participants how to use the open source statistical software package R to produce publication-quality graphics. In particular, participants will learn how to: Manage their R working environment; Communicate with R via the command-line; Import text files and comma delimited files into R; Construct standard statistical graphs using the R base graphical system (e.g., bar plots, histograms, boxplots, scatterplots and time series plots); Create advanced statistical graphs using the R lattice package (e.g., multi-panel displays, 3-D plots); Customize graphical output produced by R and save it in a variety of formats (e.g., Windows meta-file, pdf, png, JPEG); Use R scripts as a means to document the R commands used for data visualization.