Before You Begin
Data Analytics for Social Sciences
By Kristina Becvar in DACSS UMass Amherst Data Analytics R
May 28, 2022
If you already are an expert in “R”, “RStudio”, and “GitHub”, you are likely not in the place I was when I began the DACSS program, and bless you! For me, it took a lot of remedial catch-up work to become even remotely fluent in these new languages.
A few different entry points to understand a little about data are in this list, though not exhaustive and definitely not the final words on the matter!
Background
Articles
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What is “tidy data”? Hadley Wickham
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Sidenote: who is Hadley Wickham? Someone you’ll learn a lot about
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What’s the big deal about reproducable data? Roger Peng
Books
- R for Data Science Open Source
Videos
- Hadley Wickham on R for Data Science
Understand the Elements of Your New Workflow
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Complete these installation instructions.
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Test your connection between GitHub and RStudio following these steps.
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NOTE: Experts strongly recommend that if you are not already a fluent GitHub user you choose HTTPS over SSH.
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Read through as much as possible on Happy Git With R to understand how Git, GitHub, R, and RStudio and how they all work together.
Installations
After installing Git/GitHub/R/RStudio, there are some packages you will use from the beginning, which you can install by connecting to the internet, opening RStudio, and running at the command line:
```r
> install.packages(c("usethis", "remotes", "distill",
"postcards", "here", "tidyverse"))
```
Get Down with Markdown
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It’s easy to complete this 10-minute interactive tutorial on Markdown.
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This is your resource for RMarkdown
Configure Your GitHub Profile
Customize Your Profile README
You can share information about yourself with the community on GitHub by creating a profile README. GitHub shows your profile README at the top of your profile page.