Introduction to R for Life Sciences

Course goals

General
In contemporary times, nearly every field within medical and biological sciences grapples with an escalating influx of data. These datasets have become so vast and intricately structured that standard software applications are no longer up to the task. This is where an alternative approach, involving programming languages like R, is not only highly recommended but also fundamentally indispensable.
 
 
Learning goals
Primarily coding skills, extended by knowledge on using R specifically for life science research. The aim of this course is to provide students with the basics of programming in R. Students will learn how to use basic functions of R via R-studio and at the end investigate and visualize gene expression (RNA-seq) data by self-made scripts.
 
Skills
The student can: Use R-studio and, write a script to answer life science related questions. Including the following topics

• Data types, structures
• Write and use functions
• Data import, handling
• Figures
• Basic statistics
• Flow control
• Packages

 
Course types
The Introduction to R for Life Sciences is given each period, in period 1 and 3 the regular “in class” version is given and in period 2 and 4 a “self-study” version is given.
 
Regular version (period 1 and 3)
Two full weeks, online lecture on Monday, classes on Tuesday to Friday of week1 and Wednesday of week 2, rest is self-study. Course will wrap up with an assignment for a grade on Friday in week 2.

Self-study version (period 2 and 4)
Study load: two full weeks, which can be self-planned over almost the whole period. An introduction lecture and Teams access will be given in the first week of the period. Then you can work on the material by your own schedule. At the end of the period there will be an online Q&A session about the graded assignment, which will be, in person, at the end of the period.

Content

Content:
In this course, the focus is on learning the basics of the programming language R. Using examples and exercises on life-sciences related topics the individual topics are learned first, after which the focus switches on combining the different topics to practice the “logic” of programming.
 
After this course the student has obtained the skills to self-sufficiently use R and R-studio.