Week 11: Introduction to R

Authors
Affiliation

Menuka Bhandari

CFAES Bioinformatics Core, Ohio State University

Jelmer Poelstra

Published

November 1, 2025

1 Overview

This week, we will cover the basics of the R language - we will learn about R and RStudio interface, data structures and data types in R, and working with tabular data in R. R is a great tool for statistical analysis and visualization of any kind of data, including omics data sets.

2 Lectures & Learning goals

Some of the things you will learn this week:

Introduction to R and RStudio

  • The RStudio layout and the functions of the different panes and tabs
  • The basics of interacting with R by using R as a calculator
  • Defining a variable/object in R, and assigning values/data to them
  • Calling R functions
  • Installing and loading R packages
  • Getting help in R

R vectors and data types

  • The vector data structure
  • Data types - character, integer, double and logical

Working with tabular data in R

  • The data frame data structure, and different functions to reorganize and modify data frames
  • The matrix data structure

3 Assignments and exercises

4 Further resources

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