MIDS 1C: R Programming Bridge Course

This bridge course is distinct from credit bearing courses in the degree – it has no graded components. Instead, it has been designed so that a broad base of learners can come up to speed with some of the core pieces of the R language.

In contrast to many methods of learning new languages, this course focuses on working with high-level parts of the language – namely plotting (from ggplot2) and data manipulation (from dplyr) before addressing lower-level parts of the language. Indeed, this course is at an even higher-level part of the langauge api than the R for Data Science textbook.

I (Alex) made this choice deliberately, based on a model of spoken language-learning: When learning a new language, we try to build concepts and vocabulary, even if this means that we conjugate verbs incorrectly or use inefficient methods of expressing ourselves. Often times, coding-language-learning tries to approach their language as though there is some axomatic truth from which the language is derived. These “truths” are enshrined in style guides, deployed code, and bravado; but they hide a more important truth – just start communicating and see what you can get done.

You can probably nagivate a busy market and appreciate the culture in a foreign land where you don’t speak the language. Similarily, you can probably write clumsy code that expresses your intent and learn from your data. Just start writing and learning; we’ll speak fluently soon enough.