🗓️ Session 2: First steps in R

Author

Affiliation

Published

25 09 2026

Modified

18 09 2026

In this session, you will learn about how to use the integrated development environment R-Studio to edit and execute R script and about the basic commands in R. Moreover, you will be introduced to two fundamental concepts: assignments and functions.

👨‍🏫 Lecture Slides

Download the slides of this session (PDF)

🎥 Accompanying lecture videos

All the videos are available via this playlist.

📚 Mandatory Reading

First Steps in R on Method and Inquiry (Gräbner-Radkowitsch 2026)
Chapter 2 in Wickham et al. (2023).

🏆 Further readings

R Studio Cheat Sheet
Chapter 4 in Wickham et al. (2023).
Chapter 8 in Wickham et al. (2023).

✍️ Coursework

Do the Basics exercises of the package DataScienceExercises

Quick code for starting the exercises

learnr::run_tutorial(
  name = "Basics", 
  package = "DataScienceExercises", 
  shiny_args=list("launch.browser"=TRUE))

Do the Functions exercises of the package DataScienceExercises

Quick code for starting the exercises

learnr::run_tutorial(
  name = "Functions", 
  package = "DataScienceExercises", 
  shiny_args=list("launch.browser"=TRUE))

If you have questions or problems, please post them in the Moodle forum

References

Gräbner-Radkowitsch, C. (2026) “First Steps in R” C. Gräbner-Radkowitsch (ed.), Method and Inquiry, available at https://euf-methodology-hub.netlify.app/resources/first-steps-in-r.

Wickham, H., Çetinkaya-Rundel, M. and Grolemund, G. (2023) R for data science: Import, tidy, transform, visualize, and model data, 2nd edition., Beijing et al.: O’Reilly, available at https://r4ds.hadley.nz/.