Writing reproducible R code

This course will present best practices for documenting the work they did using R code and for sharing the computational environment needed to reproduce it. Particular emphasis will be placed on the use of R notebooks and the packages “renv” and “rang” for managing package dependencies. We will also discuss the use of Binder, but not containerization with Docker.

You will learn:
– how to write and document R code that can be easily re-used
– how to use the “renv” package to keep track of the packages being used in a project
– how to use the “rang” package to recover the packages used in a project
– how to use mybinder to share their work in a ready-to-use interactive notebook

Participants need to be familiar with R and the basics of management of R libraries and their dependencies.

Please be present for the lectures on the first day and you will benefit greatly if you prepare work that you want to make reproducible. On the first day, we will look at the basics of management and reproducibility of a research project involving R. Students will be given a “toy” project to work on throughout the course. As homework, you have to create a reproducible “bundle” (they can keep working on the example or apply the lessons to their own material). On the second day of the course, we will go through the homework and any problems that might have arisen from implementing the workflow shown in the course. To finish, we will create a Binder notebook.