R course: Advanced modules
 

1.  Concept

This modular seminar addresses everybody who is interested in improving existing R skills.

This seminar is also intended as a preparation for the course in applied statistics and data analysis, which requires some scripting skills.

There will be

• a little theory
• focus on technical aspects (not on interpretation)
• time for questions and answers
• hands-on training based on the requests you write in the comment field of the registration form. Feel free to approach us with your data

Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of a language of scientific computing: R, Matlab (exercises will be in R) which are taught in the course 'R - The basics'

2.  Place and time

• When? April 20-24, 2015
• Where? MPI for Biogeochemistry, Seminar room B0.002

3.  Registration

• Register here by April 9, 2015.

4.  What you need to prepare

Please make sure that a recent version of R is running on your laptop.
You can download the most recent version here: http://www.r-project.org/
RStudio is a new open-source integrated development environment that runs on all platforms. It nicely combines console, script editor, working directory, plots etc. into a an uncluttered layout that you can easily navigate. You need to have R installed before you can use RStudio as a development environment.

Please also make sure that you can access the internet via WLAN (BGC-users, if you have a BGC-account; BGC-guests, if you don't have an account)

5.  Agenda

5.1  Part 1

• Lecturer: Thomas Wutzler
• Focus: speeding up your computations, sharing your code
• When? Monday & Tuesday, April 20-21, 2015; start is 9:30 in the morning and 13:30 for the afternoon sessions
• Contents
  • Under the hood of R
    • Environments
    • Frames
    • Copy-Reference Semantics
  • Organizing your code: packages and documentation
  • Speeding up your computation
    • locating bottlenecks
    • vectorizing
    • linking to low level code (examples C and C++)

 

5.2  Part 2

• Lecturers: Matthias Forkel
• Focus: Dealing with time series data
• When? Wednesday, April 22, 2015, 9:30-12:30 morning session, 13:30-16:30 afternoon session
• Where? MPI for Biogeochemistry, Seminar room B0.002
• Contents
  • classes for dates and time (Date, POSIXct, POSIXlt)
  • classes for time series (ts/mts, zoo)
  • reading temporal data, character/date/time conversions
  • plotting time series data and simple analyses (plot, acf, ccf, aggregate, cycle, stl, ...)

5.3  Part 3

• Lecturer: Matthias Forkel
• Focus: Dealing with spatial data
• When? Friday, April 24, 2015, 9:30-12:30 morning session, 13:30-16:30 afternoon session
• Where? MPI for Biogeochemistry, Seminar room B0.002
• Contents
  • Introduction to spatial data in R
    • Packages for spatial data
    • Classes for vector and raster datasets
    • Reading and writing of spatial data
  • Mapping
    • Plotting functions for spatial data
    • Graphical representation of spatial information
    • Coordinate systems and reprojection
  • Spatial data analysis
    • Methods for vector data
    • Methods for raster data
  • OPTIONAL: Exchange between R and other spatial software
    • Import of GoogleMaps and OpenStreetMap data in R
    • Export data to GoogleEarth
    • Linking R with GIS software

 

6.  Course material

Slides of Thomas Wutzler

7.  Feedback

11 out of 21 participants filled in the survey by May 26, 2015. Thanks a lot for participating in this survey! Your feedback is valuable because it helps the instructors and organizers to improve the individual modules and the general structure of the course.
The survey results are available here. Statistics and statements should not be taken as an exhaustive or exclusive list.