University of New South Wales

High St, Kensington NSW 2052 (Boral Theatre in the AGSM)
Feb 13-14, 2014
9:00 am - 4:30 pm

Instructors: Daniel Falster, Rich FitzJohn, Diego Barneche

What: Our goal is to help scientists and engineers become more productive by teaching them basic computing skills like program design, version control, testing, and task automation. In this two-day bootcamp, short tutorials will alternate with hands-on practical exercises. Participants will be encouraged both to help one another, and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems during and between sessions. Attendants are offered online office hours: regular events to get one-on-one help from Software Carpentry instructors, online.

Who: The course is aimed at postgraduate students and other scientists who are familiar with basic programming concepts (like loops, conditionals, arrays, and functions) but need help to translate this knowledge into practical tools to help them work more productively.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a few specific software packages installed. (The list will be sent to participants a week before the bootcamp.)

Content: The syllabus for this bootcamp will include:

Contact: Please mail a.letten@unsw.edu.au for more information.


This intensive 2-day Software Carpentry bootcamp will introduce attendees to a range of computing skills aimed at making them more productive and efficient in their work. A substantial focus of the workshop will be on improving programming skills in R, but will also include topics on version control, using the shell, and reproducible research. Short tutorials will alternate with hands-on practical exercises. Participants will be encouraged both to help one another, and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems during and between sessions.

Who

The bootcamp is targeted at postgraduate students and other researchers in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Please note that this is not an introductory R course and in order to get the most out of the bootcamp, attendees should have at least a basic knowledge of programming in R. However, please don't let that scare you off - if you'd like to attend but have never used R before, working through the online material covered in 'Day 1' of the NiceR code 'Introduction to R' will get you up to speed!

Schedule

Day 1
09:00 - 9:20 Introduction
9:20 - 10:00 Intro to R
10:00 - 10:20 Break
10:20 - 12:00 Functions
12:30 - 13:30 Lunch
13:30 - 14:00 Project setup
14:00 - 14:45 Repeating things (loops)
14:45 - 15:05 Break
15:05 - 16:00 Repeating things (plyr)
16:00 - 17:00 Testing
Day 2
09:00 - 10:00 Basic shell scripting
10:00 - 10:15 Break
10:15 - 12:15 Version control with git
12:15 - 13:15 Lunch
13:15 - 14:00 Git workflows
14:00 - 14:30 Break
15:00 - 16:40 Reproducible research with knitr
16:40 - 17:00 Wrap up

Installation

Please follow these installation instructions.

Course notes

The materials covered in this botocamp are available here.