Stream overview

This stream is aimed at people who are looking to learn the R language for data manipulation and statistical analysis. No programming experience required, so it is ideal for students, postgraduate researchers, and anyone who has been using commercial software for data analysis and wishes they could have more flexibility in their analyses!

We will teach you the basic syntax of the R language, and right away you’ll be using it to import, manipulate and plot data. You will get into the good habit of using scripts to write clear and reproducible code, and learn the most efficient tricks to prepare and tidy data for analysis in R. We will use a variety of ecological data to practice making graphs and running linear models. Soon you will have all the skills you need to analyse your own data and present the results in a professional way!

As part of this course stream, we suggest you do the following tutorials:

Getting started

We hope you enjoy doing the course! There is no time limit for completion, so you can take it at your own pace. Each tutorial listed above might take you between one and three hours to complete, and your completion will be recorded once you take the quiz at the end. You can track your progression and access the course quizzes in our test centre.

You can download all the materials for this stream from our GitHub repository.

If you are not yet registered for the course, you will have to sign up first.

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Challenge yourself

Have you completed all the tutorials you wanted to? Feel you’re ready for some real-life applications? We encourage you to test your skills and take the challenge associated to this stream.

Our case-study challenges are designed to test the range of skills you gained throughout the course. We provide guidance but no step-by-step instructions, so your solution will be unique! A challenge might take you 4-8 hours to complete (get in touch if you get stuck!). The button below will take you to the challenge page where you can see what is required.

All done?

If you have finished the stream and would like to request a certificate, you can do so in a few clicks. Note that this will not exclude you from the course, so if you decide to come back for more our doors are still open!

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Get in touch


Bee in your bonnet? Technical issues? Don't hesitate to get in touch with any questions or suggestions concerning the course. Please keep in mind that this is a brand new course and we are still testing and implementing some features, so if you notice errors or some areas of the site are not working as they should, please tell us!