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Course Description

R is one of the most important scripting languages for both experimental and computational biologists. It is well-designed, efficient, widely adopted and has a very large base of contributors who add new functionality for all modern aspects of data analysis and visualization. Moreover, it is free and open source. However, R’s great power and expressiveness can at first be difficult to approach without guidance, especially for those who are new to programming. This workshop introduces the essential ideas and tools of R. Although this workshop will cover running statistical tests in R, it does not cover statistical concepts.

Course Objectives

After the course, participants should be able to:

  • Apply basic conventions of data handling, including organization and analysis.
  • Break down, and compose solutions to computing tasks in R.
  • Identify and implement key R syntax, functions and packages.
Target Audience

Graduates, postgraduates, and PIs who design and execute strategies for data analysis but have little or no familiarity with the R statistical workbench.

Prerequisites

You will require your own laptop computer. Minimum requirements: 1024×768 screen resolution, 1.5GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, 10GB free disk space, recent versions of Windows, Mac OS X or Linux (Most computers purchased in the past 3-4 years likely meet these requirements). 

This workshop requires participants to complete pre-workshop tasks and readings.

 

Course Outline

Module 1: Foundations of R and RStudio

Practical 1: Introduction to Base R & RStudio

Module 2: Data Manipulation and Exploration

  • Practical 2: Data Wrangling
  • Practical 3: Introduction to Statistics in R

Lecture 1: Health Policy Simulation in R – Dr. Alton Russell

Module 3: Data Visualization and Dimensional Analysis

  • Practical 4: Data Visualization

Lecture 2: Factor Analysis for Human Spatial Vision – Dr. Alexandre Reynaud

Module 4: Reproducible Research and Reporting

  • Practical 5: Working with Rmarkdown & Quarto

Lecture 3: Smoothing Curves for DNA Methylation – Dr. Celia Greenwood

Module 5: Collaborative and Version-Controlled Workflows

Practical 6: Using Git with R

Workshop Details:

Duration: 2 days

Start: Oct 01, 2025

End: Oct 02, 2025

Location: Montreal, Quebec Canada
Course Mode:

Status: Application Open

Apply
Offers:
CAD + tax $525 for applications received between June 25, 2025 to August 1, 2025
CAD + tax $725 for applications received between August 2, 2025 to September 17, 2025
Limited to: 30 participants
Open Access Content:

Canadian Bioinformatics Workshops promotes open access. Past workshop content is available under a Creative Commons License.

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