Hello R, This Is Me!

STAT 218 - Week 1, Lab 1

January 11^th, 2024

Today’s Menu

Today we will learn

• What is R?
  
• What is RStudio?
  
• What is Quarto?
  
• Panes in RStudio
  
• First Coding Experience
  • Hello World!
    
  • Creating an Object
    
  • Running some functions
    
• How to Get Help
  
• How to Install a Package

R and RStudio

Hadley Wickham and others at RStudio, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

RStudio, Inc., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

• R is a computer language.

• R is an environment for statistical computing and graphics.

  • R provides a wide variety of statistical and graphical techniques.

• R is a free open source software

• RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for R
• RStudio has four main panes each in a quadrant of your screen

What Can We Do with RStudio?

via GIFER

Everything we need to do for this class and beyond!

What is Quarto Document?

Quarto is…

• an open-source scientific and technical publishing system
• a multi-language, next-generation version of R Markdown.
• enabling you to combine code and text to create rich outputs, like reports and presentations. (like an advanced version of a word processing tool)

Important

• R is the programming language for statistical computing
  
• RStudio is the IDE that facilitates R programming
  
• Quarto document is a document type that combines text and code
  
• In short, we will create Quarto documents in RStudio and we will use text and R codes in that Quarto document.

Creating a Quarto Document

• We will use Quarto to produce (render!) PDF documents for our lab assignments, take-home midterm, and final project where we integrate both text and code.
  

Tip

• You can create your own Quarto document by clicking File > New File > Quarto Document

• Let’s try to create our first Quarto document!

Creating a Quarto Document

How to Create a New Quarto Document

Console Pane

• This week, we will use Console Pane to grasp the basics of coding.
  • Next week, we will use Source Pane to delve into Quarto document features.

Say, Hello World!

• hello world is a phrase that most programmers use when they first begin programming in any language.
  • Let’s write our first “hello world!” in the Console Pane together.

print("hello world!")

Let’s Create An Object

We create an object by using “<-” called as “Object Assignment Operator”

	Windows	Mac
Shortcut	Alt and -	Option and -

wedding_year <- 2006
wedding_year

[1] 2006

Let’s Create An Object and Play

wedding_year <- 2006
wedding_year

[1] 2006

wedding_anniversary <- 2023 - wedding_year
wedding_anniversary

[1] 17

wedding_Anniversary

Error in eval(expr, envir, enclos): object 'wedding_Anniversary' not found

As you can see, R is case-sensitive!

Vocabulary Section

do(something)

do() is a function;

something is the argument of the function.

do(something, colorful) # I can put here a comment by using hashtag

do() is a function;
something is the first argument of the function;
colorful is the second argument of the function.

R ignores comments if you put # like above

I love Dr. Dogucu’s teaching strategy to teach students the basics of coding. This is how she explains the idea of coding. I am using some of her strategies during this session.

Let’s try some functions!

wedding_years <- c(2006, 2020, 1984)
wedding_years

[1] 2006 2020 1984

wedding_years <- c(wedding_year, 2020, 1984)
wedding_years

[1] 2006 2020 1984

Let’s try some functions!

names <- c("Me", "My Sister", "My Parents")
names

[1] "Me"         "My Sister"  "My Parents"

data.frame(name = names, wedding_year = wedding_years)

        name wedding_year
1         Me         2006
2  My Sister         2020
3 My Parents         1984

What if Dr. Demirci is not around & I need help?

How Can I Install a Package and Use It?

• R users can create/contribute packages, and they are for free!

• For this lab, and many others in the future, we will use the following:

  • The tidyverse “umbrella” package which has many different R packages for data wrangling and data visualization
  • The openintro R package is our second textbook’s package and we will use this for our lab sessions.
  • Let’s download them!

install.packages("tidyverse")
install.packages("openintro")