![Rlogo[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/rlogo1.jpg)
This is a shout-out to those of you who would like to learn more about statistics, inference and probabilities using R, a free, open-source high-level mathematical language. Those who have been following this blog and Climate Audit will know that R is used by Steve McIntyre and others to great effect.
The course is called “Explore Statistics with R” and its going to be run by the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden (the course is in English) starting 9th September for 5 weeks.
The course will be using health data as the discussed dataset but the skills have obviously wider application than that.
Skilled persons who can process and analyze data are in great demand today. In this course you will explore concepts in statistics that help you make sense out of data. You will learn the practical skills necessary to find, import, analyze and visualize data. We will take a look under the hood of statistics and equip you with broad tools for understanding statistical inference and statistical methods. You will also get to perform some really complicated calculations and visualizations, following in the footsteps of Karolinska Institutet’s researchers.
and
In this course you will learn the basics of R, a powerful open source statistical programming language. Why has R become the tool of choice in bioinformatics, the health sciences and many other fields? One reason is surely that it’s powerful and that you can download it for free right now. But more importantly, it’s supported by an active user community. In this course you will learn how to use peer reviewed packages for solving problems at the frontline of health science research. Commercial actors just can’t keep up implementing the latest algorithms and methods. When algorithms are first published, they are already implemented in R. Join us in a gold digging expedition. Explore statistics with R.
There are 22000 students already enrolled, so there are bound to be plenty of people who are beginners as well as those more mathematically gifted.
If this follows the pattern of other MOOCs then there won’t be 22000 students by the end, but those who persist will be much better informed especially about the methods used by some scientists. 😉
Join up at http://edx.org and enroll from there on the course.
You don’t have to complete everything, although there is a certificate for those who score sufficiently highly.
I’m in. I have used R in the past but am fairly rusty. I plan to audit the course as a refresher.
I also noticed on the edX course listing that there is an Introduction to Water and Climate course (CTB3300WCx) starting this week. Is anyone familiar with this course? Does it provide a balanced presentation of climate science? I noted with interest that CO2 was not mentioned anywhere in the course description.
R can be downloaded here:
http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/
Wouldn’t hurt to become familiar with how to run simple scripts-
John A, – Thanks for the info. I’m signed up.
Duke C. – Thanks for the download link
Joseph Shaw – That Water and Climate course looks interesting to me too.
I’m going to go ahead and sign up anyway and provide feedback here as the course progresses.
edX do seem to have quite a number and variety of courses. I’ve previously done some MOOCs with Coursera with no adverse effects.:)
The only oddity was the edX registration requested my mailing address. What point to that? Maybe some heavily armed Statisticians show up at my door if I don’t keep up with the course? 🙂
Looking forward to course videos. I think Swedish accents are great.
I signed up, too. Thanks for the alert.
I am currently taking a Coursera series. But I’ve learned that with R, even more so than with other programming languages, there a many ways to accomplish the same task. It will be interesting to get another perspective and contrast the courses.
So does R have some breakthrough new way to calculate the average of already exactly known numbers; ANY numbers; not just hatched, matched, and dispatched numbers (health) ??
I have something useful to do that day; so have fun.
There’s no curriculum, and the course description makes it sound like R for people who don’t know statistics… at all. Sorry, I have stuff to do. If anyone runs across a fast-paced R course with advanced material, I would love to do that.
Hey, this one is startng tomorrow, August 26:
https://www.edx.org/course/delftx/delftx-ctb3300wcx-introduction-water-2091
Anyone you can get to check that course material?
I download R and sighed up for the course.
This sequence from Johns Hopkins gets people up to speed in R. All the courses are offered every month so you can hop in at any point in the sequence to match your skill level (and it is free).
https://www.coursera.org/specialization/jhudatascience/1
I’m in…I’m tired of trying to wrap my head around concepts that I have no training in.
rip
I think it’s the sort of course that anyone who has a basic understanding of math and some knowledge of averaging can gain experience on.
The Americanese for this would be “YMMV”
You can take Climate Literacy: Navigating Climate Change Conversations here:
https://www.coursera.org/course/climateliteracy
From ES on August 25, 2014 at 10:58 am:
I would not take any online course involving “Climate Change” without at least a preliminary review of course materials. Because likely I’d soon be finding nonsense I could quickly rebut with material from Tisdale and Eschenbach, among others. Except I wouldn’t be allowed to rebut as it’d likely get quickly rejected as blog scribblings by un-educated un-credentialed know-nothings, put your faith and trust in real scientists.
This would soon result in my just-emptied coffee mug impacting my flatscreen LCD monitor, which is actually my TV thus would disrupt my watching of local TV news. Which altogether would be annoying.
I signed up some time ago. As a matter of fact, I had forgotten! :Thanks for the reminder.
I shall look into this for sure. I just installed the R package on the laptop. Lugging the desktop box, flat screen monitor and keyboard to Starbucks is getting to be a drag.
For those of you who use Emacs, check out the Emacs Speaks Statistics (ESS) package at http://ess.r-project.org/index.php?Section=home
Thanks for the link! Going to take the course…
I signed up too.
The terms of service are a bit over the top.
including
bolding is mine.
Be careful what you post; as others note, the data on the internet may be forever and possibly not as you posted it.
Unfortunately, R cannot tell us how, by whom and to what extent raw data have been manipulated for the purpose of deceit. At least, we can think of the “why”.