Introduction to R for complete beginners

Cloud-SPAN develops training in Specialised analyses for 'omics with Cloud-based High Performance Computing and is funded by the UKRI innovation scholars award (MR/V038680/1) the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/X006999/1).

Overview

This online two-hour workshop is an introduction to R for complete beginners. It teaches you how to find your way round RStudio, use the basic data types and structures in R and how to organise your work with scripts and projects. It also teaches you how to import data, summarise it and create and format a graph. The workshop assumes no prior experience of coding.

R is a free and open source language especially well-suited to data analysis and visualisation and has a relatively inclusive and newbie-friendly community. R caters to users who do not see themselves as programmers, but then allows them to slide gradually into programming.

Learning outcomes

After this workshop the successful learner will be able to:

• find your way around RStudio

• use the basic data types and structures in R

• organise your work with scripts and projects

• import data, summarise it and create and format a graph

Pre-course instructions for participants

You should install the following before the workshop

• R version 4.0 or higher
• RStudio (2023)
• these packages: tidyverse

Installing R

Download the pre-compiled binary for your OS from https://cloud.r-project.org/ and install. More specifically:

For Windows

Click "Download R for Windows", then "base", then "Download R 4.x.x for Windows". This will download an .exe file; once downloaded, open to start the installation. You can accept all the defaults.

For Mac

Click "Download R for (Mac) OS X", then "R-4.x.x.pkg" to download the installer. Run the installer to complete installation. You can accept all the defaults.

For Linux

Click "Download R for Linux". Instructions on installing are given for Debian, Redhat, Suse and Ubuntu distributions. Where there is a choice, install both r-base and r-base-dev.

Installing R Studio

Download and install the version for your OS from: https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/ You can accept all the defaults.

For Windows with no admin rights

Download the .zip source archive under "Zip/Tarballs". Extract the files to a folder where you have write access. Open the bin folder and find the RStudio program: it is named rstudio-xxxxxxx.exe (where xxxxxx is a version number), but the file extension will typically be hidden, so look for rstudio-xxxxxxx. Double-click the executable or use the shortcut to open.

Installing packages

From CRAN

Once you have installed R and RStudio, start RStudio up and go to the Packages tab in the bottom right pane; click Install and type the name of the package you want to install in the box that appears. Then wait until you get the cursor (>) back in the console window.

Having problems?

If installing R and RStudio is tricky or impossible with your set up (e.g., if you only have a chrome book) then you can use https://posit.cloud/. This is a version of RStudio that runs in your browser. It is free for 15 hours but you will need to make an account. You will still need to install packages.