Welcome to R4DSS25

Welcome to R for Data Science and Statistics 2025 (R4DSS)!

These trainings aim to equip you with the tools you need to feel confident in performing your own data analayses using R. Why R and not, say, Excel or SPSS? While such software are intuitive to use, they offer less flexibility than the typical suite of scientific programming languages. R’s well organised and documented syntax, abundance of libraries for analysis and visualization and established community of contributors make it a powerful ally when mastered.

No matter your prior familiarity with R or data science techniques more broadly, we hope you’ll gain something from these sessions. The course will be organised as follows:

  • Weekly virtual classes on Wednesday at 9am

  • One-on-one meetings with Hasse to discuss any challenges encountered in the exercises and track personal growth

  • Weekly readings and exercises from the 2nd Edition of R for Data Science by Hadley Wickham, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel and Garrett Grolemund and the corresponding r4ds.tutorials package

Getting started: installing R and RStudio (skip if they are already installed)

If you haven’t already, please visit Posit for instructions on downloading and installing R and RStudio. The order is important: please begin by installing R and then proceed to the RStudio installation. Ensure that you choose the correct operating system.

If you are using Windows, click the “Install R for Windows” option and then choose the base installation. For Mac, you will likely be using an Apple Silicon edition, in which case, please select the following:

Once R and then RStudio have finished installing, execute RStudio and type R.version into the console in the lower left panel. If R has installed correctly, you should see details on your version print into the console. Mine looks like:

If this is working, congratulations!

Creating a new project in RStudio

Option 1: Create a New Project from Scratch

  • Open RStudio
  • Go to the top menu → File → New Project… You’ll see three main options:
    1. New Directory → to start a fresh project
    • Choose New Directory (for a fresh start).
    • Pick a project type. Most often, you’ll choose New Project (plain R project)
    • Give it a name, like r4dss_project
    • Click Create Project RStudio will then create a new folder for the project and set it as your working directory. It will also add a new file ending in .Rproj in the working directory of the project
    1. Existing Directory → if you already have a folder with files
    2. Version Control → to clone a GitHub or Git repo

Option 2: Make an Existing Folder into a Project

  • If you already have R scripts and data in a folder:
  • Go to File ▸ New Project…
  • Select Existing Directory
  • Browse to your folder
  • Click Create Project
  • RStudio adds the .Rproj file there — you can now open it anytime to jump right back into that project setup.

Cheatsheets and other helpful resources

Here are some useful cheatsheets and resources to have handy as you continue your R journey!

Cheatsheets

Supplementary books