Session 0: Basics (with optional R primer)
11:00, May 27 2008
This optional meeting of the course will be an R primer. We'll be focusing on obtaining a basic level of familiarity required to participate in the course. We won't cover everything you'll need to know for the course, but hopefully we'll cover enough that you will be able to learn new material on your own.
Whether you attend the R primer or not, you are responsible for understanding the content of these readings before the first session.
If there are things you would like to cover, please make note of them below. NB: as of now there are no plans to teach graphing functions during the primer. It's possible that we could have a special add-on session to discuss different graphics packages in R if there's sufficient interest. Let AustinFrank know if you want to participate in such an event.
Reading
Understanding of this material will be assumed throughout the course. Please read these introductory materials and make sure you understand them before beginning the readings for the first session. Here and for the other sessions, we sometimes assign parts of chapters for reading, so please check the page numbers for the suggested readings (or risk being confused).
Baa08 |
Chapter 1 (pp. 1-20) |
Intro to R. |
G&H07 |
Chapter 2 (pp. 13-26) |
Intro to probability theory. |
Dal04 |
Chapter 2 (pp. 45-55) |
Intro to R |
For absolute beginners, this is also very useful:
Dal04 |
Chapter 1.1 - 1.2 |
Intro to R |
|
Chapter 1.5 - 1.5 |
Intro to R |
Assignments
- Make sure you have the latest version of R (version 2.7) installed on a laptop that you can use during class.
R Primer
Suggested topics
If you have any material that you would like to cover that isn't included in the list below, please make note of it here.
Topics
Interacting with R and R files
- Using a command line
- command history, continuation lines, stopping execution defining variables calling functions
- Installing packages
install.package(), update.package()
- Using the R workspace
ls(), rm(), setwd(), getwd(), library()
- Using an R script file
- Saving R objects
save(), save.image()
Getting help
- Function-specific help
?(), help()
- Searching the help
apropos(), help.search(), RSiteSearch()
Loading data
- general purpose functions
scan()
- specific formats
read.csv(), read.delim(), library(foreign)
General data structures
- vectors / arrays
c()
- matrices
cbind(), rbind(), table()
- lists
list(), unlist()
- data frames
data.frame()
- general structure manipulation and interaction
[], [[]], $, subset(), str(), cut(), repr()
Basic descriptive statistics
- summary stats
mean(), sd(), var(), quantile()
Probability distributions
- random sampling
runif(), rnorm(), rbinom()