If you're thinking about teaching a course on statistics and data science using R, Chester Ismay and Albert Kim have created an online, open-source textbook for just that purpose. ModernDive is a textbook for that instructs students how to:
- use R to explore and visualize data;
- use randomization and simulation to build inferential ideas;
- effectively create stories using these ideas to convey information to a lay audience.
The book makes liberal use of R packages, and makes effective use real-world data sets to communicate key concepts. Though still a work-in-progress, the book already effectively covers the basics of data analysis (data wrangling and data exploration and data visualization, including the elegant roadmap for selecting a chart type shown below) and statistical comcepts including simulation, regression and hypothesis testing. The book also aims to give students an understanding of the overarching data analysis process, including concepts like reproducibility and telling stories with data.
Incidentally, the book itself was written in R, using the bookdown package, which makes it easy to combine R code and outbook into a book format. Contributions are welcomed, and the source code that generates ModernDive is available on Github.
You can find the ModernDive book at its homepage, moderndive.com.
I downloaded everything and started to use it but as soon as I clicked on the Build Book button it told me I needed markdown v 1.2 and only 1.1 was available locally ... I installed the package just a minute before I tried to run markdown.
Any advice?
Posted by: Duncan Williamson | February 10, 2017 at 05:34
@Duncan, are you using Microsoft R Open? In that case, you'll need to change your default repository to get the latest version of Rmarkdown. Easiest way to do so is with:
More details here.
Posted by: David Smith | February 10, 2017 at 07:33