Introduction to R

Authors: Maria Doyle, Jessica Chung, Vicky Perreau, Kim-Anh Lê Cao, Saritha Kodikara, Eva Hamrud

Tutors: Eva Hamrud, Saritha Kodikara

Audience	Prerequisites	Duration
Biologists	Install R & R Studio	~ 2.5 hours

Description

This repository includes material for a hands-on workshop 'Introduction to R for biologists'. We show you some basics in R programming and some powerful things R can do (that you cannot do with Excel). The aim is to give beginners the confidence to continue learning R. The focus is on data wrangling with tidyverse and visualisation of biological data (RNA-seq) with ggplot2, as we believe this is a productive and engaging way to start learning R.

Before the workshop:

Before attending the workshop please make sure you follow the below instructions to set up your environment:

1. Download the most recent version of R and RStudio using the links below:

   1.1. R
   1.2. RStudio

2. Install the R package called tidyverse:

   2.1. Open RStudio
   2.2. Type install.packages("tidyverse") into your console (bottom left window) and press enter
   2.3. Lots of text will appear in your console as the package is installed. Wait until RStudio stops printing things (this may take a few minutes).
   2.4. Check it has installed correctly by typing library(tidyverse) into the console. Press enter and see if you get any error messages.

If you have any problems with the above steps, please get in contact with us, it is important you have your computer set up before attending the workshop so we can start the teaching material from the beginning.

Some known issues with installing programs and packages include not having the correct permissions on your computer. If this is the case, please contact your IT team.

Alternatively, you can access Rstudio on your web browser so you don't need to install anything on your computer. To do this, go to the Posit cloud website and make a free account. Then click the buttons to create a new space and Rstudio project. Once Rstudio is open you can run steps 2.1 to 2.4 to install the tidyverse package.

Material

Click here to access the HTML workshop document - we will be using this throughout the session.

Click here to access the Padlet page for extra questions to challenge yourself! These are bonus questions you can answer using the course material or by searching the internet.

Data

All data used for the workshop are in data.zip.

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• This material was inspired from the workshop r-into-biologists from our colleagues from Melbourne Bioinformatics, University of Melbourne