Chapter 1 Welcome!

Hi, and welcome to the R Module 3 course at Colorado State University!

This course is the third of three 1 credit courses intended to introduce the R programming language, specifically R Markdown.

Through this Module (course), we’ll explore how R can be used to do the following:

  1. Create reproducible reports so you can explain your work in a narrative form
  2. Track, accept, and revert changes through version control
  3. Share code and collaborate with others

In addition, you’ll also be exposed to broader concepts, including:

1.0.1 How To Navigate This Book

To move quickly to different portions of the book, click on the appropriate chapter or section in the the table of contents on the left. The buttons at the top of the page allow you to show/hide the table of contents, search the book, change font settings, download a pdf or ebook copy of this book, or get hints on various sections of the book. The faint left and right arrows at the sides of each page (or bottom of the page if it’s narrow enough) allow you to step to the next/previous section. Here’s what they look like:
Left and right navigation arrowsLeft and right navigation arrows

Figure 1.1: Left and right navigation arrows

1.0.2 Associated CSU Course

This bookdown book is intended to accompany the associated course at Colorado State University, but the curriculum is free for anyone to access and use. If you’re reading the PDF or EPUB version of this book, you can find the “live” version at https://csu-r.github.io/Module3/, and all of the source files for this book can be found at https://github.com/CSU-R/Module3.

If you’re not taking the CSU course, you will periodically encounter instructions and references which are not relevant to you. For example, we will make reference to the Canvas website, which only CSU students enrolled in the course have access to.

  1. Department of Statistics, Colorado State University, ↩︎