Section outline

  • First Steps with R in Life Sciences

    Lausanne, 16 September 2015

    Overview

    R is a complete and flexible system for statistical analysis which has become a tool of choice for biologists and biomedical scientists, who need to analyze and visualize large amounts of data. One reason for this success is the availability of many contributed packages, which are available freely and can be installed and run directly from R. In bioinformatics, in particular, most published papers include a link to an R package implementing the methods described in the article.

    This "First Steps with R" course is addressed to beginners wanting to become familiar with the R syntax and environment as well as with the most common commands to start exploring their own data.

    Objectives

    At the end of the course, participants should be confortable with the R environment and be able to read, understand and write R commands, that will allow them to:

    • Interact with the R environment
    • Create and manipulate different data structures
    • Import data, perform basic manipulation and export results
    • Generate graphs

    Requirements

    As it is a course for beginners, no background in R or any programming language is required. However, you are encouraged to go through the R tutorial and documentation available here.

    Technical requirements: a Wi-Fi enabled laptop with latest R (3.2.1) and R studio (0.99.467) versions installed.

    Application

    The registration fees for academics are 50 CHF. This includes course content material and coffee breaks. Participants from non-academic institutions should contact us before application.

    The course is full.

    Deadline for application and free-of-charge cancellation is set to September 4. Cancellation after this date will not be reimbursed. Please note that participation to SIB courses is subject to this and other general conditions, available at http://www.isb-sib.ch/training/training-general-conditions.html.

    You will be informed by email of your registration confirmation. Your application will be considered only if you fill the "Comments" field in indicating your background and your current project that could benefit from taking this course.

    Location

    Room 414, Amphimax Building , University of Lausanne (M2 metro line, Sorge station)

    Additional information

    The course will be taught by Diana Marek.

    We will recommend 0.25 ECTS credits for this course (given a passed exam at the end of the session).

    You are welcome to register to the SIB courses mailing-list to be informed of all future courses and workshops, as well as all important deadlines using the form here.

    For more information, please contact training@isb-sib.ch.

    • What is R and why should biologists use it ?
    • The R and RStudio environments
    • Data structures in R
    • Reading data from files and exporting data to files
    • Graphical functions