25-28 October 2021

This course will introduce scientists and practitioners interested in applying statistical approaches in their daily routine using R as a working environment. Participants will be introduced into the mysteries of R and R Studio while learning how to perform common statistical analyses. After a short introduction on R and its principles, the focus will be on questions that could be addressed using common statistical analyses, both for descriptive statistics and for statistical inference.

The course is aimed at early-career researchers (PhD students, early postdocs) or any other types of practitioners interested in widening their analytical toolbox. The course is structured in a way that even an inexperienced and naïve attendee could take advantage of the possibilities offered by the inclusion of statistical analyses using R. There will be a mix of lectures and hands-on practical exercises using R as a freely available software and online resources.
The course is devoted to beginners with no prior knowledge in statistics, programming, and R language, but with a keen interest in using R as a platform for statistical analyses. All scripts will be carefully explained to allow all attendees understanding the rationale and usage of the statistical approaches.

1. Understand how to read, interpret and write scripts in R.
2. Learn statistical tools to address common questions in research activities.
3. Hand-on experience on all the steps.
4. Being comfortable with using R when performing both descriptive and inferential statistics.

 Monday – Classes from 2 to 8 pm Berlin time - “Introduction to R”

Session 1: Introduction
In this session I will kick off with a lecture about the rationale of R as a language. We will discuss the reasons for each participant for attending the course, so that we can target parts of the course on the specific personal needs. I will use this introduction to motivate the four days of the course by introducing the potentials of R. Then, I will explain basic principles and terminology of R.

Session 2: Introduction
During the afternoon we will go through some of the basic principles of R, including packages, commands, reading and writing files, how to look for help, basics of R philosophy, how to write scripts, what objects are, etc. We will start obtaining our first outputs in R. The aim is to understand the use, potentials, and rationale of R as a platform for different uses.