![]() ![]() RMarkdown lets R users write a report that includes text, code and code outputs – including charts created with plot() and. If you’re not really familiar with RMarkdown here’s the quickest description I can give: We’re very fortunate that the most commonly used data formats in the social sciences can be read into R with the following well documented and user-friendly packages:Įncourage students to explain their code as they go I therefore recommend that you teach your students to use R as soon as possible in their workflows. These Frankenstein monster-like workflows aren’t helpful to anyone. You (or anyone else you’ve roped into marking) will need to scour through both code and Excel files to ensure correctness. It’s also going to make it harder for you to evaluate project-based assignments for reproducibility. It becomes hard to keep track of which part of the data wrangling was done in R and which was done in Excel. Unfortunately, in practice this leads to a big problem. Over several years these young researchers might become slightly more comfortable with using R for some of the wrangling. I’ve experienced what this leads to many times – most students will try and use Excel for as much of their data wrangling as possible and only use R code where they can’t get something to work in Excel. However, most of your students will have been using Excel for years before you first meet them. ![]() It’s common to accidentally misapply function across columns – sometimes causing country-level austerity cuts. The very useful “text to columns” wizard does not keep a history of how columns were separated Individual cells can be manipulated at will without a casual reader noticing ![]() Excel does not encourage good data practices, here are a few examples of why: Do students manipulate data in Excel or R?Ĭode is the gold standard for reproducible data analysis (and visualisation). I’ve previously written for SAGE Campus about how combining R and RMarkdown benefits students and researchers, but here I’d like to focus on the benefits for you as instructors and course leads. ![]()
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