Programming in R

Instructor(s):

• John Fox, Sociology, McMaster University

The S statistical programming language and computing environment has become the de-facto standard among statisticians and has made substantial inroads in the social sciences. A statistical software "package," such as SPSS, makes routine data analysis relatively easy, but makes it relatively difficult to do things that are innovative or non-standard, or to add to the built-in capabilities of the package. In contrast, a good statistical computing environment also makes routine data analysis easy, but additionally supports convenient programming.

This two-week course focuses on programming in R, a free, open-source implementation of S. Some previous exposure to R is assumed, but not to programming in R nor to programming in general. The course is project-oriented: Each participant will be expected to complete a substantial programming project in R, either working individually or as part of a collaborative team.

Topics covered: (1) Review of R basics, including R graphics. (2) Programming in R, part 1: basic data structures and programming techniques. (3) Programming in R, part 2: object-oriented programming and selected programming techniques. (4) Debugging R code and building R packages. The overall goal of this course is to convey the programming skills that will enable participants to employ R to handle situations where currently existing software tools are not sufficient to achieve the researcher's objectives.

Dates:  June 23-July 3 

Fee:  consult the fee structure