Introduction to R and spatial data

𝗥 and 🗺 - introduction to R and spatial data! A 3hr interactive workshop.

Workshop outline

An introduction to reproducible data analysis with R. The aim of this workshop is to help you decide if R is for you and learn more about it. We will cover how to get started with R and structure your projects in it. Create publication-quality figures and tables that can be updated with the click of a button. Produce reports that contain both narrative/prose and figures/tables. Furthermore, we will show you how to learn on your own (self-study) and how to get help when you are stuck. To get the most out of the workshop you will have to have some experience with basic concepts of programming (in any language) like variables, functions and libraries.

This will be an interactive workshop. Before arriving please:

• pack your laptop and its charger
• install R and RStudio
• download the data we will use
• introduce yourself on the shared notepad of the workshop

Lessons and schedule

1. Intro to RStudio and basics (15minutes)
2. Structuring your work (25minutes)
3. Making plots (55minutes)
4. What to do when you are stuck (15minutes)
5. Interactive tables and maps (25minutes)

Personas, do you recognise yourself?

If you are wondering who this workshop is for take a look at the personas of fictional attendees we created to help design the workshop.

Learning objectives

At the end of the workshop you will ...

• … be able to create a new project that contains an analysis script that takes raw data and produces figures and tables from it without modifying the raw data.
• … be able to place markers on an interactive map and share it with your colleagues.
• … be able to recognise when you are stuck.
• … know where to find documentation and how to ask good questions to maximise your chances of getting help.
• … know that there is no magic: the programs you use are no different in principle from those that you build.

Software

For this workshop will be using R and RStudio. As the workshop is only 3hrs long you will have to have these installed and working prior to the workshop. Installing R and RStudio is straightforward: just download and install the version appropriate for your operating system. If you run into issues contact Tim: <tim@wildtreetech.com>.

• R: Windows | Mac OS X 10.9+ (Mavericks) | Others
• RStudio: Windows | Mac OS X 10.6+ (Snow Leopard) | Others

We will use a few libraries that are not part of R by default. You can install them by running the following commands in RStudio:

install.packages("ggplot2")
install.packages("rmarkdown")
install.packages("leaflet")
install.packages("mapview")
install.packages("rgdal")
install.packages("sp")
install.packages("DT")

Install these packages by starting RStudio and executing each line in the console.

Also make sure that your packages are up-to-date by running:

update.packages()

Licence

The materials for this workshop are a remix of several existing projects and some original work. The existing work that has been remixed:

• Rhody R stats intro (CC0)
• Software carpentry's R novice gapminder material (CC BY 4.0)

All original work is under the following license:

R and maps by Tim Head is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.