This interactive online MSD Skills training course is aimed at MSD postgraduate research students and staff with some programming experience in R who want to expand their skills to create publication quality figures from biological data.
Which course is for me?
MSD Skills runs several courses in statistics that have similar titles to this course. Here is a short description of this course vs other available courses to help you decide if you should sign up:
Fundamentals of statistical software and analysis (FoSSA): Runs online, at your own pace. Gives a brief overview of statistical theory and how to carry out a wide variety of statistical tests in R, Stata, or SPSS.
Introduction to Statistics: Runs in person over 4 days. Gives an in-depth understanding of fundamental statistical theory. Does not use any software. Students may want to take this course prior to signing up for FoSSA.
Intro to R for Biologists: Runs online over 2 days. Gives a more in-depth understanding to use the software R and make basic plots. Covers some basic statistical tests. You could take this course before or after taking FoSSA; FoSSA will show you how to run a wider variety of statistical tests in R.
Data visualisation with ggplot2 for biologists (this course): Half-day course. This is a more advanced course covering programming and visualisation in R. It does not cover statistical tests but shows how statistical information can be visualised in plots.
Course aim
This half-day course is aimed at intermediate users of R who want to visualise their data with ggplot2 and its extensions.
By the end of this session you will learn:
- How to visualise your data with ggplot2
- Perform statistical tests and add statistical information on the plot
- Use ggplot2 extensions
- Prepare plots suitable for publications
Software requirements:
The participants must have all required software (R, RStudio - https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/ , tidyverse - https://www.tidyverse.org ) installed on their computers. As this is a short course, we will not have time to troubleshoot software installation issues. So, please test that the packages are working well before the session.
Any installation questions could be addressed to courses@medsci.ox.ac.uk
PARTICIPANT NUMBERS
25
ATTENDANCE CERTIFICATE ON SURVEY COMPLETION
In order to receive a certificate of attendance, participation in both sessions is mandatory. Once you have completed the course, you will be sent an email with a link to the overall course survey, where you can propose the topics, which you would like to be covered in a follow-up advanced module - Data analysis & visualisation in R.
When you have filled in and submitted the survey, you will be sent an email with a link to your attendance certificate. Survey results are downloaded and stored anonymously.