General description
R is a widely-used programming language for statistical data analysis. This beginner-friendly module aims to provide participants with a solid foundation in R, empowering them to explore, analyze, and visualize data efficiently. Emphasis is placed on hands-on practical exercises and real-world examples, enabling students to immediately apply their knowledge.
The following key topics will be covered:
- Understanding the difference between R, Rstudio and R notebook
- Exploring basic arithmetic and logical operations.
- Introduction to essential data structures, including vectors, matrices, and data frames
- Importing data files
- Manipulating, indexing and pivoting data structures
- Generating descriptive statistics and visualisations in base-R
- Introduction to the tidyverse approach (incl. ggplot2 visualisations)
As from 2024 onwards, this module can be followed together with module 12 Introduction to statistics with R in a complete Novice track for this Summer School.
Target audience and course prerequisites
This is a beginner’s course. You will be required to install R and Rstudio on your laptop before coming to class.
Course materials
All course materials will be provided online and include slides, R-scripts and Notebooks, exercises and solutions, datasets and further reading.
Teacher bio
Gil Verbeke is a PhD researcher at the Linguistics Department of Ghent University. His research interests include second language acquisition, speech perception, phonetics and phonology. The overarching aim of his PhD dissertation is to examine how pronunciation variation in spoken English affects speech perception and word recognition for late second language learners of English. Several of his experimental studies have been published in international journals, including Bilingualism: Language and Cognition and Lingua.
Schedule
- Monday 13/07/2026, 9:00-10:30 & 11:00-12:30 & 14:00-15:30 & 16:00-17:30
- Tuesday 14/07/2026, 9:00-10:30 & 11:00-12:30 & 14:00-15:30 & 16:00-17:30
- Wednesday 15/07/2026, 9:00-10:30 & 11:00-12:30
In addition to these contact hours this module expects max. 30 mins per day for self-study to revise the course content that was covered and to prepare for the next day.