Teaching Myself R

2020–2021 is a weird year to be on sabbatical, and with my university slashing academic budgets — I had to readjust my expectations during my leave. I decided one area to focus on was better teaching myself quant methods and various tools, including learning R.

A few people have asked for resources on how I’m doing this and other resources I’ve hoarded this year, so I figured I’d write up a post for them and myself. The caveat is that I am obviously not an expert (you just read that I am teaching myself…) and my general approach was to try to learn anything, not everything (a corollary of progress, not perfection). So, this list is by no means exhaustive or expertly compiled. If it is missing your favorite resource, you can suggest it to me, and I’ll consider adding it — or make your own list! :)

Books/Guides

• R for Data Science
• Hand’s On Programming with R
• Graphical Data Analysis with R
• Discovering Statistics Using R
• Introduction to Data Science
• Statistical Inference via Data Science
• Quantitative Social Science
• Using R for Data Analysis in Social Sciences
• The R Guide
• An Introduction to R
• simpleR
• Advanced R
• Statistics with R: A Beginner’s Guide

Classes/Workshops/Etc

• RStudio has primer classes that cover some basics, a gentle introduction
• R Bootcamp
• Codecademy course: Learn R
• Swirl
• A note: I was warned against using Datacamp. You can see some of the issues involving sexual harassment here.
• Justin Post’s Introduction to R for Data Science
• Rochelle Terman’s Introduction To Computational Tools And Techniques For Social Research
• Michael DeCrescenzo’s Statistical Computing
• Chris Engelhardt’s list of R courses
• Kelly Black’s R Tutorial
• Grant McDermott’s Data science for economists
• SICSS Boot camp
• Charles Lanfear’s class/website
• Ryan Womack’s page
• Amanda Jadidi d’Urso’s Solving Programming Problems in R on Your Own
• Matt Blackwell’s R Cheatsheet
• Mia Costa’s R Tutorials
• Paul Musgrave’s R Publications
• Stat 545

Data Vizulation Books and Resources

• ggplot2: elegant graphics for data analysis
• Fundamentals of Data Visualization
• Data Visualization: A pratical introduction
• R Graphics Cookbook
• Kaggle class
• Andrew Heiss’s Data Visualization
• Thomas Lin Pedersen’s videos
• Principles & Practice of Data Visualization class