Data Carpentries in R with UofTCoders

University of Toronto

Feb 18-21, 2025

12 PM - 4 PM

Instructors: Vicki M. Zhang, Yeshoda Harry-Paul, Mete Yuksel

Helpers: Anhadvir Singh, Farhan Majumder

General Information

The Carpentries project comprises the Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry communities of Instructors, Trainers, Maintainers, helpers, and supporters who share a mission to teach foundational computational and data science skills to researchers.

Want to learn more and stay engaged with The Carpentries? Carpentries Clippings is The Carpentries' biweekly newsletter, where we share community news, community job postings, and more. Sign up to receive future editions and read our full archive: https://carpentries.org/newsletter/

Data Carpentry develops and teaches workshops on the fundamental data skills needed to conduct research. Its target audience is researchers who have little to no prior computational experience, and these lessons are all in R. In this four-day workshop series, learners will learn almost all of the tools that they may need for their personal research projects. Starting with computing and programming basics in R, and moving into advanced topics of writing functions, data analyses and visualizations, learners will finish this series with the confidence and computational power to quickly apply skills learned to complete their own research. Please see our schedule below for all of the topics that will be covered.

Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

The entire four-day workshop will cost $25CAD, which will cover snacks for all four days, lunch on the last day, and help support instructor honoraria.

For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Good Enough Practices for Scientific Computing".

Who: The course is aimed at undergraduate students, graduate students and other researchers. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.

Where: MadLAB, Gerstein Library, 9 King's College Cir, Toronto, ON M5S 1A5. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

When: Feb 18-21, 2025; 12 PM - 4 PM Add to your Google Calendar.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below).

Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. The workshop organizers have checked that:

We are dedicated to providing a positive and accessible learning environment for all. We do not require participants to provide documentation of disabilities or disclose any unnecessary personal information. However, we do want to help create an inclusive, accessible experience for all participants. We encourage you to share any information that would be helpful to make your Carpentries experience accessible. To request an accommodation for this workshop, please fill out the accommodation request form. If you have questions or need assistance with the accommodation form please email us.

Glosario is a multilingual glossary for computing and data science terms. The glossary helps learners attend workshops and use our lessons to make sense of computational and programming jargon written in English by offering it in their native language. Translating data science terms also provides a teaching tool for Carpentries Instructors to reduce barriers for their learners.

Contact: Please email uoftcoders@gmail.com for more information.

Roles: To learn more about the roles at the workshop (who will be doing what), refer to our Workshop FAQ.


Code of Conduct

Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct. This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.


Surveys

Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.

Pre-workshop Survey

Post-workshop Survey


Schedule


Setup

To participate in a Data Carpentry workshop, you will need access to software as described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.

The setup instructions for the Data Carpentry workshops (with R) can be found at the workshop overview site.

We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.