R for Journalists

Working in a spreadsheet can get messy and confusing. Especially if you have a very large dataset and need to perform many operations. You have to document each step to be able to repeat the same analyses later on. Fortunately there is R.

With a few simple lines of code you can do the same things in R as in a spreadsheet: cleaning, sorting, filtering, grouping (pivot tables), statistics and charts, but now in a clear workflow that can easily be changed, repeated (for example with a new dataset) and shared. Experience why R (freeware) in a short time has conquered the hearts of many data journalists.
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WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
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Getting to grips with R
· Introduction in R and Tidyverse (What is it?)
· The advantages of R
· Guided tour through R Studio
· Six basic functions for data analysis in R
· Exercises with current European data on industrial and agricultural pollution
· Combining datasets
· More exercises

Extend your workflow in R
‍· Summary of part 1
· Simple statistics with R
· Creating graphs in R
· Cleaning up data in R
· Tips for further study
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Things you can do in R after this course:‍
· create rankings
·  search for typical examples in data (based on averages, medians and modes)
· search for exceptions (outliers)
· spot trends (calculate percentage changes)
· calculate percentages of total (ratios)
· group and select data 
· merge multiple datasets into one 
· clean data on- create graphs in R
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LEVEL‍

Some experience with spreadsheets makes it easier to follow this course, but is not necessary.

COURSE MATERIAL
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You will  get a list of online tutorials and an extensive workbook with examples from the course. In this course you will use your own laptop. The required software (R and R Studio) is free and can be downloaded and installed from the internet in advance.
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