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Guidance for teaching R programming to non-statisticians

Langan, D; Wade, A; (2016) Guidance for teaching R programming to non-statisticians. In: MacGillivray, H and Martin, MA and Phillips, B, (eds.) OZCOTS 2016: Proceedings of the 9th Conference on Teaching Statistics. (pp. pp. 141-146). Statistical Society of Australia Inc. (SSAI): Canberra, Australia. Green open access

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Abstract

The Centre for Applied Statistics Courses (CASC) at University College London (UCL) provide short courses on statistics and statistical software packages. Popular day-courses include a wellestablished ‘Introduction to R’ course and the newly developed ‘Further Topics in R’. In the latter, attendees are taught intermediate-level topics such as loops and conditional statements. Attendees range from postgraduate students, academic researchers and data analysts in the private sector without a strong background in statistics or programming. First, we highlight some issues with providing our training course to this demographic, derived from our experience and from anonymous online feedback. Second, we discuss some of our solutions to these issues that have shaped our course over time. For example, one issue is catering to a wide audience from differing fields, different levels of computer literacy and approaches to learning. To address this, we prepare for a high level of flexibility on the day and include intermittent practical exercises to get real time feedback on the abilities of attendees. Finally, we reviewed the experiences of other teachers on similar courses documented online and compared these experiences with our own. We offer guidance to other teachers running or developing courses for intermediate-level R programming.

Type: Proceedings paper
Title: Guidance for teaching R programming to non-statisticians
Event: 9th Conference on Teaching Statistics (OZCOTS 2016)
Location: Canberra
Dates: 08 December 2016 - 09 December 2016
ISBN-13: 9780980595024
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Publisher version: https://iase-web.org/Publications.php?p=Regional_P...
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Population, Policy and Practice Dept
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1561436
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