1202: Exploring the R Ecosystem for Transparent and Reproducible Statistical Analysis

Date: Wednesday, August 26

Time: 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM

Presenters: Aleka Kapatou (Director of Data & Statistical Analysis, Center for Faculty Excellence) & Richard Ressler (Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer, CAS | Mathematics & Statistics)

Session Description:

In this hands-on workshop, explore how R, a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics, can help you perform reproducible statistical analysis of real-world data. Use the free RStudio Desktop, R “Tidyverse” packages, and the Quarto publishing system in an integrated workflow to load, manipulate, visualize, and analyze data, and then communicate your results.

The R programming language was built by statisticians to support a wide range of research and analysis tasks requiring data manipulation, visualization, and statistical analysis. Explore the R ecosystem in a one-hour CFE workshop that allows you to experience reproducible analysis of real-world data. The workshop uses the RStudio Desktop application, the Tidyverse collection of R packages, and the Quarto publishing system in a workflow for loading, manipulating, visualizing, and analyzing data, and then communicating your results. While point-and-click analysis in spreadsheets or statistical packages is useful, it can be difficult to explain, reproduce, or update with new data. An R-based workflow is designed to support interactive analysis while documenting each step in both narrative text and code. This makes it easy to review, verify, modify, and rerun your work. It also makes it easier to update an analysis with new data or share your work with colleagues. The software is free to install on Windows or macOS and is designed to work together. Participants will receive installation instructions and assistance before the workshop so they are ready to begin when the session starts.