R course

Here are the materials for the training course Modelling and visualizing data using R: A practical introduction. This is a basic overview of using R for data analysis, and of linear statistical modelling. It would be suitable for anyone who has had some stats training but not used R; or has used R a little but not become confident; or has neither had stats training nor used R but is not happy with a reasonably steep learning curve. The emphasis is on rapidly getting to be able to use R for most of the common practical purposes, and knowing that you can take it further should you need to. It is designed for you to be able to work through on your own.

The course consists of a PDF manual (download here: Course PDF) plus eight associated data files and two script files (download from here and copy them to a convenient folder on your computer).

The course uses two applications, R itself, and RStudio. It would be a good idea to install R and RStudio on to whatever computer you plan to work from before beginning. You need to install R before installing R Studio. You install R from: https://cran.r-project.org/ and RStudio from https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/ (Desktop version, Open Source licence).

There are seven sessions to work through, plus an appendix with some useful bits and pieces. Each session is short enough to be worked through in a single setting if all goes well. The topics covered in the course are the following:

1. Introducing R and RStudio
2. Introducing the General Linear Model
3. Plotting and interactions
4. Generalized and mixed models
5. ANOVA and factorial experiments
6. Model selection and meta-analysis
7. Writing R functions, programming and simulation

   These materials are completely free and openly shareable, but please let me know if you are using them, and if you encounter any problems.