Software Carpentry aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic research computing skills. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools for computing with the R programming language and RStudio, including program design, version control, data management, task automation, and creating visualizations and reports. Throughout the lesson, emphasis is placed on practices that support scientific transparency and reproducibility. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

The workshop will take place over 2 days. Registering for one day will register you for the other; you should plan to attend both days.

The workshop is open to anyone. You do not need any experience to participate but you will need access to a WIndows, Mac or Linux computer. The workshop will be hosted in person in Newman Library and will include a 1-hour lunch break each day; instructions for accessing course material and installing software will be sent in advance. For questions, contact Data Education Coordinator Nathaniel Porter.

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Comfortably navigate the RStudio interface, working with scripts, interactive sessions, workspace objects, packages, and help
• Import and export mulitple data formats in R
• Access and modify rows, columns, and data points in R Data Frames
• Use loops, functions, and conditionals to create automated R workflows
• Download, import and use add-on packages in R
• Combine, clean and reshape data frames in R (with dplyr and tidyr)
• Create simple visualizations and reports in R (with ggplot2 and knitr)
• Write understandable, reproducible and well-documented code in R

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please email library-event-accessibility-g@vt.edu at least 10 business days prior to the event.