Week 2: Loading & Understanding Data

Author

Josie Griffin ’09

Published

March 28, 2025

Agenda

This week we’ll be learning how to add our own data from a file to RStudio. Not always as simple as it sounds. In order to do so, you’ll need to know a little about file paths. Then, we’ll talk about how your data is stored in R and what it considers a variable. In doing so we’ll use some basic R functions.

After today you should be able to:

  • load your data files (csv or xlsx into R) by naming the path to the file

  • use project files to avoid having to do the above!

  • know what a variable object is

  • perform some basic operations (like sum, mean, etc) on variables


This workshop is part of a series. If you would like to see previous workshops or see the topics of future workshops, please check the workshop schedule. All workshops are held on Mondays at 5:30 in ETC 208.

If you have questions beyond what is covered in the workshops, please feel free to contact Josie at either griffinj@reed.edu or data@reed.edu.

You can also drop in to the open hours at the DataLab for help with R or any other quantitative subject!