Before we start
Data Analytics Survey
We will collect some anonymous student data, so please fill in this quick Data Analytics Survey
Sign up and join course Slack channel
You should have received an invitation to sign up at the course Slack channel. This is where you can ask any questions you have and I will try to respond as quickly as I can. As most questions tend to be similar, it’s always a good idea to have a look at what has already been asked.
If you haven’t received an email, you can use the direct link to sign up for Slack.
Dataquest - Datacamp
- You should have received a link to sign up for an account at Dataquest and Datacamp. Please register and complete the following:
- R Basics for Data Analysis course
- Introduction to the tidyverse course
Software installation
- Install R and RStudio on your computer. You can find details on how to install the software here.
- We can add to the functionality of base R, by installing a number of packages. We will be using the
tidyverse, a collection of packages to help with data manipulation. You can find details on how to install the tidyverse here.
Getting acquainted with Markdown and R Markdown
Throughout the course, we will be using Markdown, a special kind of markup language that lets you format text with simple syntax. You may want to read about markdown here and try out a great interactive markdown tutorial
There is a special kind of markdown document, R Markdown that contains chunks of R code that can be run to produce summary statistics, visualisations, etc, as well as markdown text. R Markdown is the best authoring format for Data Science and allowsus to report, reproduce, and parameterise our work.You can learn more about R Markdown and follow an interactive RMarkdown lesson
Pre-course assignment due on Canvas on 28 Aug 2021
The aim of the pre-course assignment is to ensure that you successfully install the software, that you get some practice with markdown, and that you are able to knit an R Markdown (.Rmd) document into an HTML file.
Specifically, you need to:
- Write a short biography using markdown
- Fill out the code in the empty chunks provided, (you can definitely copy, paste, and adapt from tutorials!), and answer all questions.
- Knit the Rmd to an HTML file
- Upload to Canvas the knitted HTML file
- You can download pre-programme files (data, code, etc.) by pulling from course Github repo.
Alternatively, please install package
usethis. Once you have it, you can download, unzip, and open everything within an RStudio project by typing the following in the RStudio console
install.packages("usethis")
usethis::use_course("https://github.com/kostis-christodoulou/am01/raw/master/pre_programme_assignment.zip")Register a GitHub account
If you don’t already have one, please register a GitHub account{target = _blank}– and choose our username wisely ;-)
Further Resources on ggplot
In our first steps with the tidyverse, we will learn how to visualise data.
- Besides the courses, please try out this Data Visualization Primer.
- Once you complete the primer, you may want to read through the visualisation examples and have a go at the visualisation exercises contained in this website.