Readings & Resources

Required textbook

The main textbook for this course is the 2nd edition of R for Data Science by Garrett Grolemund and Hadley Wickham. The book is freely accessible online.

Completing the exercises in the book? No official solution manual exists, but several can be found online (for the 1st edition of the book). I recommend this version by Jeffrey B. Arnold. Your exact solutions may vary, but these can be a good starting point.

Each class will have assigned readings from this book or from other resources: they will all be posted on this website. You need to complete the assigned readings before coming to class.

Additional resources

• RStudio Cheatsheets – these are very handy printable cheat sheets for common R tasks and features.
• ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis, 3rd Edition – Hadley Wickham. Excellent resource for the ggplot2 graphics library.
• Advanced R – Hadley Wickham. A deep dive into R as a programming language, not just a tool for data science.
• An Introduction to Statistical Learning: with Applications in R – Gareth James, Daniela Witten, Trevor Hastie, and Robert Tibshirani. A thorough introduction to statistical learning and machine learning methods, focusing on the fundamentals of how these methods work and the assumptions that go into them. See also ISLR tidymodels Labs. This site demonstrates how to implement all the labs.

Resources for under-represented groups in programming

Thanks to Angela Li for compiling these recommendations:

• R LGBTQ Twitter: Affinity group for queer people in the R community – Twitter often promotes events, panels and talks by and for queer R users.
• Gayta Science Twitter: Alliance that uses data science techniques to give LGBTQ+ experiences a voice – Twitter will often share data-driven work concerning the LGBTQ+ community.
• RLadies Community Slack: A global programming meetup for non-binary, trans, and female R users.
• RLadies Remote Twitter: Remote chapter of R Ladies – has Slack coffee chats to discuss programming topics in a supportive environment.
• People of Color Code Meetup: A meetup for POC software developers – has events where POC developers can work on personal projects, collaborate, and learn.
• R Forwards: A task force set up by the R Foundation to address the under-representation of under-represented groups in the R community – collects representation data in the R community, produces workshops and teaching materials
• R Community Diversity and Inclusion Working Group: Working group set up by the R Consortium to encourage and support diversity and inclusion across a variety of events and platforms in the R community