ACM San Francisco Bay Area Professional Chapter

R has become one of the most popular languages for data analysis and graphics. This workshop will provide a practical introduction to this comprehensive platform.  Participants will learn to import data into R from a variety of sources; clean, recode, and restructure data; and apply R’s many functions for summarizing, modeling, and graphing data. Both basic and more advanced forms of data analysis and graphics will be covered. Additional topics include navigating R’s comprehensive help systems, practical advice for processing data, common programming mistakes to avoid, and useful functions for data mining.

Course Outline

I. Introduction – An introduction to R:  R syntax and data structures; working interactively and in batch; alternative IDEs and GUIs; adding  functionality through packages; common programming mistakes; getting unstuck – were to find answers to your questions

II. Data Management – Importing, cleaning, and reformatting data:  transforming and recoding variables; subsetting, merging, and aggregating data; control structures; user-written functions

III. Graphics – Taking advantage of R’s powerful graphics:  creating basic and advanced graphs; customizing and combining graphs; innovative methods for visualizing complex data

IV. Statistical Analysis and Data Mining – Using R for description, prediction, and classification: descriptive statistics and multi-way tables; ANOVA variants; regression (e.g., linear, logistic, poisson), classification trees, cluster analysis, and other multivariate methods; dealing effectively with missing data; Going further

Here is sample code that will be used in the course.

 About R

• The R Project– Includes the R download and FAQ
• R is Hot– White Paper
• Bay Area UseR Group (R Programming Language)
• Commercial version of R – From our sponsor