R Introductory Workshop

R is a free available professional statistical analysis software. It is likely true that R is now the most popular statistical analysis software used by researchers at all levels all over the world.

More and more people are reporting their research results in the context of R in literature (e.g., professional journal articles, books, and workshop/conference presentations, etc.) Different from the point-and-click (i.e., dropdown menu) type of the user interface statistical analysis software (such as SPSS), however, R is essentially designed for conducting analysis through inputting R scripts or command lines in the console window so that users are in full control what you are intended to do. One of the very strength of R is in its graphical functionalities.

For various reasons, R is much less familiar or intentionally avoided by many non-statistician professionals who are not used to conducting data analysis by programming (i.e., writing command lines).

This workshop first provides a brief overview on what is R and how to use R for statistical data analysis. After a brief account on the main features of R software, it is showed how to conduct statistical analyses via copy-and-paste of the R scripts into the R console window. Various types of simple/specific analysis examples of using R are presented.

The second part of the workshop provides the information on what support is available from the Quantitative Consulting Unit (QCU) to researchers at CSU for learning/using R and offers the opportunity for the presenter to answer participants’ questions on how to learn R.

This workshop is developed for promoting data analysis using R by targeting those ones who have little or no experience with R but do have basic understanding of statistics at year one undergraduate level and/or experiences of performing data analysis using other software. If you are a confident SPSS user, you should find this workshop interesting and comprehensible.

Fee-based workshop

This is a fee-based workshop to ensure the people who registered for the workshop will commit himself/herself in their time and efforts for participation.

The registration fee is $50 per person.

Workshop structure

1.5 hours: a very brief overview of what is R and an introduction to how to use R for statistical data analysis (mostly descriptive data analysis but with many graphs)

Morning tea break or lunch break (depending on the starting time)

1 hour:

  • what support is available from QCU to researchers at CSU for learning/using R
  • the very basic points on how to learn R

Expressions of interest

Five people is the minimum number required for running one of this workshop. In most cases we are flexible to suit the need of the majority of the participants in terms of their preferred time and place (e.g., we are happy to travel to different campuses) for the workshop.

If you are interested in holding or attending any of these workshops please contact qcu@csu.edu.au. We can also conduct workshops online.

Tutorials

The workshop resource materials are available to participants only in electronic form (i.e., you can/need to download them onto your computer).

Resources will be provided at the time of the workshop.