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This is BU's Study Group repo. Join us to learn code and share tips
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Getting Started with R #8

Closed tomhohenstein closed 8 years ago

tomhohenstein commented 9 years ago

There was a lot of talk at the Hacky Hour about R. I'm starting this issue to help jump start a potential lesson. Hopefully, someone will get the ball rolling.

cguard16 commented 8 years ago

I would be interested in an intro session to R! I've used SPSS and STATA, but I've never used R before and I'd love to learn it!

ashiklom commented 8 years ago

Half of our department (Earth & Environment) and a bunch of folks in Biology use R. If nobody volunteers, I could lead this tutorial, but it might be nice to get some fresh instructors!

tomhohenstein commented 8 years ago

I agree with @ashiklom it would be great if we could find someone willing to step in. I'm happy to help with the lesson development. Mozilla has a number of lessons in R and even introduction lessons that we could use.

ashiklom commented 8 years ago

Also, BU's Research Computing Services has a bi-annual series of tutorials, including several on R.

tomhohenstein commented 8 years ago

Excellent point! Those sessions are great. Tagging @keithfma and @katgit from RCS (Research Computing Services). I'd also be happy to help schedule follow up R sessions from the RCS tutorials.

katgit commented 8 years ago

@tomhohenstein Hi Tom and all. I will be happy to teach an R tutorial and may be a few followup sessions if there is an interest.

cguard16 commented 8 years ago

Thanks for sharing! I hadn't heard about the BU sessions below and just signed up for the R series.

I noticed that Python is full already - wow! Does anyone know if they will be offering more Python classes later on this semester?

cguard16 commented 8 years ago

Also, many job descriptions I've seen list "statistical analysis or computer programming (for example VBA, SQL, MATLAB, Python)" - I'm not currently familiar with any of these. Are these programs complementary? Generally, if you understand one of these languages, is it pretty easy to pick up the others?

katgit commented 8 years ago

@cguard16 Reserach Computing organizes tutorials 3 times a year at the beginning of each semester: fall - September/October; spring- January/February and summer - June Python, MATLAB and R are normally very popular and fill very quickly, If the Python session is filled I would highly recommend you to email to help@scc.bu.edu and ask if you still can attend. In many cases we invite people to attend but cannot guarantee the sitting (but often some people sign up and do not come). You can also email the instructor - Robert Putnam (putnam@bu.edu) directly. If there is enough interest (and the instructor has time and space) we might be able to run an extra Python session.

katgit commented 8 years ago

@cguard16 Statistical Analysis can be performed in many languages. Normally it is done using statistical software: R/SAS/SPSS/STATA, but some languages have some libraries that provide some ( limited ) tools to perform some basic statistical analysis. MALTAB, Mathematica, Python and Perl have many statistical packages. SQL is the language that is used to deal with databases and has only limited data analysis tools. If you are interested in programming, you should look into Python, MATLAB and/or C. If you are interested in data analysis - R probably is the best tool, though SAS, MATLAB, Python are often used too. It very much depends on the field you are working in. --Katia Oleinik, RCS

tomhohenstein commented 8 years ago

added into #44 - closing issue