Introduction Mike’s Workbook

The workbook contains a series of R tutorials under the banner R Work, and sets of questions for practice and concept development as Biostatistics Homework.

Using Mike’s Workbook for Biostatistics and R code: Local installations or CoLab notes

In general, R coding instructions in this Workbook assume an installation of R on a local computer, Linux, macOS, or winPC. Although most of the commands and instructions in the Workbook will also work without modification if running R in a serverless computing environment (eg, Google CoLab), some instructions in the Workbook are not appropriate for or require modification to an R instance running in the cloud (eg, Google CoLab).

R coding practices in Mike’s Biostatistics Book and this companion workbook roughly follow guidance outlined in a September 2018 R-Bloggers post, “R Code — Best practices,” by The R Trader. Of note, naming conventions: variables are nouns, variable names are written in lowerCamelCase; functions are verbs, function names are period separated, eg, my.function; script file names all end with .R and are written snake_case.R.

In our Biostatistics course, BI-311, students using the serverless computing option primarily use Google CoLaboratory, therefore, CoLab options are highlighted in Mike’s Workbook. For example, look for the CoLab, skip this step: statement. Instructions lacking the CoLab, skip this step: statement should apply to CoLab.

R Work: Ten tutorials to get you started with R and R Commander

Biostatistics homework: Problem sets and questions to accompany Mike’s Biostatistics Book

FAQ and other resources available in Appendix