NZILBB R and Open Science Workshops
Joshua Wilson Black 
Introduction
This online book contains material for NZILBB’s R, Stats, and Open Science workshops. The workshops began late in the first semester of 2024. As time goes on, this book will expand in both content and contributors.
In-person sessions
I am currently running in-person sessions at NZILBB. We are running two groups:
- An ‘introductory’ session, working through the material in the Foundations section of this book.
- An ‘advanced’ session, working through material in the Additional Topics section.
The sessions run on alternate weeks from 1-2:30pm in the Brain Box (Elsie Locke 203), with the first intro session on the 24th of July and the first advanced session the following week.
Announcements are made on the NZILBB Rocket Chat in the #r-stats-open-sci-workshops channel. If you don’t know how to access this, email me at joshua.black@canterbury.ac.nz.
One-on-one help
For UC students and staff, I am happy to talk over any issues you have with this material. Please get in touch with me at joshua.black@canterbury.ac.nz.
If you have found your way to this material by some other means, you can also email me!
Other resources
You may find the following links profitable:
- The alternative to data analysis with a programming language is usually some kind of spreadsheet. Here are some spreadsheet horror stories: https://eusprig.org/research-info/horror-stories/.
- Why do we have to learn how to program? Why is science ‘amateur software development’? This is a good lecture on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qzVV7eEiaI.
- Usually these techniques aren’t explicitly taught. These workshops are our attempt to respond to this problem!
- Why can’t you do data science with a spreadsheet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbtcsGE0OA
- These workshops have been heavily influenced by Winter (2019)