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Class Overview
Contemporary research in higher education (and other disciplines) should be both rigorous and reproducible. This is class will teach you the fundamentals of data management and quantitative research workflow with emphasis on rigor and reproducibility.
Often referred to informally as “the R class”, you will get an introduction to coding using the R programming language, but many of the skills are directly transferable to future work in Python, Stata, or other software.
Credit to Ben Skinner and Matt Capaldi
First and foremost, credit for the structure and vast majority of the content on this site goes to Dr. Benjamin T. Skinner and Matt Capaldi, who have taught this class in the past.
If you want to learn more, see Dr. Skinner’s version of the class website.
The “I’m Stuck” Workflow
- Take a break, go outside, get some food
- Talk to your rubber duck
- Talk to your classmates
- Please acknowledge with a
## h/t
- Please acknowledge with a
- Try Google or Stack Overflow
- Please acknowledge with a
## h/t(it helps you later too!) - Caution: the internet does strange things to people… Sometimes people offering “help” can be unnecessarily blunt and/or mean, particularly to people just starting out
- Please acknowledge with a
- If you use Github Copilot to help you with your code
- Please keep your prompts and acknowledge with a
## h/t
- Please keep your prompts and acknowledge with a
- Office hours or email
A Note on Potential Frustration in this Class
For many of you, particularly those learning to code for the first time, this class will be frustrating (sometimes very frustrating), and that’s okay. Learning to write statistical code is quite literally learning a new language, whilst also coming to grips with new way of thinking. Coding requires you to be very specific and particular and the error messages are often not very intuitive. By far the best way to learn coding is to play around with it until it works, reading will only get you so far. Some of you will be more comfortable with this approach than others, but it’s something you will all have to try your best with, even professional computer programmers solve problems this way. This class is designed to force you into this habit with weekly assignments, some of which are quite tricky.
You’re all highly accomplished graduate students and it might have been a long time since you took a class on something entirely new. In a lot of graduate education classes you don’t often get questions “wrong” or fail to even get an answer, in this class, that’s pretty normal. But that’s just it, it’s normal, not a sign you can’t do it, just normal.
This frustration will probably peak in a few weeks time after the first couple of assignments. Year after year now we’ve seen this happen, but stick with it, put in the effort, and you will get there, trust us. Often students form informal study groups to work on the assignments together, this can be really helpful, as well as a good group bonding experience. We’re here to support you as you figure it out along the way so don’t hesitate to stop by our office hours or send us an email!
Useful Links
Good luck in the class!
