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Week 1 - Part A

This document provides information about the STAT104 Statistical Laboratory module at Warwick University. It introduces the lecturer and contact details, describes the structure of lectures and videos, administrative details of tutorials and assessments, an overview of the module content, advice for students, and recommended textbooks and resources for learning R.

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Hanxian Liang
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78 views15 pages

Week 1 - Part A

This document provides information about the STAT104 Statistical Laboratory module at Warwick University. It introduces the lecturer and contact details, describes the structure of lectures and videos, administrative details of tutorials and assessments, an overview of the module content, advice for students, and recommended textbooks and resources for learning R.

Uploaded by

Hanxian Liang
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ST104: Statistical Laboratory WARWICK

Introduction
Samuel Touchard
1/14
Contact

My online ”office hours”, on MS Teams, will be


I Tuesday 10.30-12.30
I Friday 10.30-11.30
but I am generally happy to engage with students whenever I am available.
If you find it easier to engage with me by email: [email protected]
If on campus, my office is MB2.10.

2/14
Lectures and videos

Notes/slides and video clips will be posted on Moodle at the start of the week.
Videos will be posted on the Echo360 platform, with also a link on the Moodle page.
In these videos, I will go through the slides and/or show examples in R, going line by line and
explaining what I am doing.

This course is based on notes and resources developed by Dr Panayiota Constantinou, Dr Ric
Crossman...

3/14
Admin
Module information:
I Tutorials/Practicals: There are 4 lab sessions in term 2 and 4 lab sessions in term 3 (8
in total).
Questions will be uploaded on the module webpage the Friday before the lab session and
solutions the Friday after the lab session (exceptions are lab 3 and lab 6).
Note: lab 1 takes place in week 7 (week beginning 22nd Feb).
I Assessment:
70% two-hour summer exam (open-book)
30% assessed work: lab 3 and lab 6 (15% each)
Lab 3: Will be uploaded on Moodle on Friday 5th March (week 8) with a deadline at
11am on Thursday 18th March (week 10).
Lab 6: Will be uploaded on Moodle on Friday 30th April (week 1) with a deadline at
11am on Thursday 13th May (week 3).
Both projects will be submitted electronically on moodle.

4/14
This module
The Statistical Laboratory lectures aim to introduce students to the R software package,
making use of it for exploratory data analysis and simple simulations.

Content:
1. Introduction to R.
2. Exploratory data analysis: methods of visualisation and summary statistics.
3. Sampling from standard discrete and continuous distributions (Bernoulli, Geometric,
Poisson, Gaussian, Gamma).
4. Generic methods for sampling from univariate distributions.
5. The use of R to illustrate probabilistic notions such as conditioning, convolutions and the
law of large numbers.
6. Examples of modelling real data (but without formal statistical inference) and the use of
visualisations to assess fit.

5/14
Some advice

Here are some tips for making the most of the course:

I Learning R isn’t too hard, but to be successful you must practice!


I Don’t just read the slides, type the commands into R yourself. Play around with them. It
may be helpful to have a laptop open while goimg through the slides and/or videos.
I Try to understand why a sequence of commands does what it does, otherwise it will be
impossible to reproduce them.
I Learn to ‘think like a computer’: Computers will ONLY do what they have been instructed
to do via a piece of code. Humans are very adept in interpreting and extrapolating
meaning from mistake-ridden sentences. But computers are not (e.g. a missing space
within the syntax of code can cause it to be misinterpreted).

6/14
Sources and recommended textbooks

I Venables and Ripley: “Modern Applied Statistics with S”


I Braun and Murdoch: “First Course in Statistical Programming with R”
I Dalgaard: “Introductory Statistics with R”
I Moore & McCabe: “Introduction to the Practice of Statistics”
I Daly et al.: “Elements of Statistics”
I Chatfield: “Problem Solving: A Statistician’s Guide”
I Freedman, Pisani and Purves: “Statistics”

7/14
Sources and recommended textbooks

I Venables and Ripley: “Modern Applied Statistics with S”


I Braun and Murdoch: “First Course in Statistical Programming with R”
I Dalgaard: “Introductory Statistics with R”
I Moore & McCabe: “Introduction to the Practice of Statistics”
I Daly et al.: “Elements of Statistics”
I Chatfield: “Problem Solving: A Statistician’s Guide”
I Freedman, Pisani and Purves: “Statistics”

Do not forget the Internet! There are a huge number of online resources available: forums,
examples, archives and documentation... If you get stuck, try searching for answers online.

7/14
Warwick resource
Moodle course ”Basic R with pointers”
https://moodle.warwick.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=41822

8/14
Warwick resource
Moodle course ”Basic R with pointers”

9/14
What is R?
R is a programming language and free software environment for statistical computing and
graphics supported by the R Foundation for Statistical Computing.

I Free and open-source project.


I Widely used in data science and statistics.
I Used to apply statistical techniques and visualise data.
I Many packages which can be installed to extend the functionality of R.

Popularity: As of February 2021, R ranks 11th in the TIOBE index (a measure of popularity of
programming languages).

Website:
https://cran.r-project.org/

10/14
Using R

There are various interfaces for using R that you can choose from. However, I strongly
recommend one of these two options:

I RStudio: Powerful, well thought out and widely used, works on all major operating
systems. Getting better all the time. Available at https://www.rstudio.com.
I R GUI (Windows, OS X): Simple, robust, effective. (Personal habits got me stuck to that
one!)

11/14
R Gui

To obtain R, start by going to cran.r-project.org.

12/14
R Studio

13/14
R Studio

I Console (bottom left): where the code, either run or directly typed, is executed.
I Source (top left): where you create your scripts and write your code.
I Environment (top right): all the objects you create will appear in here.
I Files/Plots/Packages/Help/Viewer(bottom right): where you can get help (probably the
most useful function in R!), view your created plots...

14/14

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