Week 1

Intro to R/RStudio, Functions, Vectors, Data Types

Topics

• Part 0: Welcome
  • Introduction to course & expectations (syllabus)
• Part 1:
  • Intro to R & RStudio
    • Handout with directions on installing R & RStudio
  • Introduction to Quarto
  • Functions, Vectors, Data Types

Announcements

• Class materials for BSTA 526 will be provided in the shared OneDrive folder BSTA_526_W26_class_materials_public.
• For today’s class, make sure to download to your computer the folder called part1. Open RStudio by double-clicking on the project file called BSTA_526_W26_class_materials_public.Rproj in the main OneDrive folder.

Class materials

Part	OneDrive folder	Slides	Webpage
0
1

Readings

Required

These readings are mostly supplemental and will help you if there are concepts that are unclear in class.

• R and RStudio Basics (Chapter 3) - make sure to watch the videos.
  • Skip the following sections in Chapter 3:
    • 3.3.1, 3.3.3,
• Intro to R & Rstudio, and Quarto from Day 1 of my BSTA 511/611 class in Fall 2025 (slides version)
• Vectors and Data Frames (Section 3.3) from Data Science: A First Introduction by Timbers, Campbell, & Lee
• Workflow: scripts and projects from R for Data Science (2e) by Wickham, Cetinkaya-Rundel, & Grolemund
  • Section 6.1: Scripts
  • Section 6.2: Projects

Optional

Posit/R Cheatsheets

• Many useful information and tips can be found in the list of cheatsheets on the Posit website

Markdown / Quarto

• Slides on how to do Markdown and other formatting in Quarto files. This is optional, but may be a helpful reference as you create your own Quarto files.
  • Slides are from the OCTRI-BERD workshop on Creating Professional Presentations and Websites using R/Quarto presented by Jessica Minnier & myself in July 2025.
  • There are also slides for Creating Presentations and Creating Websites using Quarto.
• Quarto’s website for Markdown Basics
  • Quarto YAML for html
  • Quarto front matter

Swirl Basics

This is a resource for learning basic R concepts using the R package swirl.

To start it, run the following code in the console in RStudio:

# first install the swirl package
library(swirl)
swirl()

# Note: type bye() to exit swirl

You’ll want to take a look at the R Programming course, especially the following sections:

1. Basic Building Blocks
2. Sequences of Numbers
3. Vectors
4. Missing values

Post-class survey

• Please fill out the post-class survey to provide feedback. Thank you!
• Previous muddiest points and clearest points with responses are collected here.

Homework

• See OneDrive folder for homework assignment.
• HW 1 due on 01/15.

Recording

• In-class recording links are on Sakai. Navigate to Course Materials -> Schedule with links to in-class recordings.