Introduction to data analysis using R
Participants will increase their data analysis and visualization skills, particularly by learning how to navigate the R environment, conduct some basic analyses, and present results. No prior experience with R is necessary. NOTE: Space is limited, so you must apply and be accepted to attend this workshop before registering. Apply ASAP here; Application in English : Application in Spanish. Applications will still be accepted after the deadline, and new participants will be notified as space allows.
Facilitated by Maya Wilson, BirdsCaribbean; Jody Daniel, Gaea Conservation Network; Jennifer Mortensen, University of Arkansas; Holly Garrod, BirdsCaribbean; and Jeff Gerbracht, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Emails: maya.wilson@birdscaribbean.org, jodyndaniel@gmail.com, jen.mortensen@birdscaribbean.org, holly.garrod@birdscaribbean.org, jeffgerbracht@gmail.com
Purpose: This workshop is intended for participants who want to increase their data analysis and visualization skills. Our goal is to guide learners who are unfamiliar with or just learning R to be able to navigate the R environment, conduct some basic analyses, and present results. No prior experience with R is necessary.
Overview: The key to deriving insights on the trends in bird populations is establishing rigorous bird monitoring programs and analyzing the data gathered. R is an open-source, freely available, cross-platform statistical programming language. It can handle the large, complex datasets that are becoming more common across all fields and is growing to be the standard statistical software for data science. It lends itself well to both academic and non-academic research and business use because of its depth of topic-specific packages. Despite these benefits of its use, R can seem daunting to those with little programming experience. Our goal is to make this powerful tool more approachable by providing the foundational skills needed for partners to manipulate and visualize their data in R, and additional resources to continue developing analysis skills. Although this training is open to all, it will target partners in the Caribbean Landbird Monitoring Network who have collected PROALAS survey data or plan to in the near future to prepare for occupancy modeling.
Objectives: By the end of the workshop, participants will have:
Become more comfortable working in R
Learned R basics, including the R package ecosystem
Practiced reading files and manipulating data in R
Generated summary statistics and tables in R
Been introduced to data visualization and created figures
Session Structure: The workshop will run July 17th. Participants will receive hands-on instruction in data processing and visualization approaches using R. Participants will be guided through simple scripts/markdowns and provided with additional resources. Participants will also be required to attend a virtual session prior to the conference to prepare for the workshop, including downloading R on their personal computers.