Download “Advancing in R” – a workshop organised by PR~statistics

“Advancing in R”
– a workshop organised by PR~statistics
at the Scottish Centre for Ecology and the Natural Environment
Dec 1st to Dec 5th 2014
Barbara Klump, School of Biology
The course “Advancing in R” was an introduction to model selection and simplification,
linear and generalised linear models, as well as mixed effects and non-linear models
using the software R and RStudio. It has been an excellent intensive training course,
which helped me to understand better how to use statistics in a biological context.
Not only the extensive knowledge of the instructors, Dr Luc Bussiere (lecturer in
evolutionary biology at Stirling University and Dr Tom Housley (recent PhD-graduate
from Stirling University), but also their teaching skills and enthusiasm made this course
both very useful and enjoyable.
The course was tailored specifically for biologist and began by briefly reviewing some
fundamental statistical concepts and coding practices before moving on to different
modules dealing with regression.
Each of the 10 modules included a short lecture and extensive practical exercises. The
lectures were an introduction to the topic in general, but also included some ecological
and evolutionary examples from the literature. The exercises had us working with the
data and aiming to derive statistical results and prepare high-quality graphs, which
could be used for publication. I found the practical exercises very useful not only to
understand how something is done, but also the underlying concepts. The way the
practicals were organised, ensured that I was comfortable with one topic before moving
on to the next. Supplementary exercises (with solutions) were available to
accommodate different speeds of work and the instructors were always there to help
and advice on problems and help interpret the results.
Over the course of the one week workshop, I greatly enhanced my theoretical
knowledge of linear and linearized models which will enable me to competently build
and evaluate the most commonly encountered models in the ecological and
evolutionary literature. I could improve my ability to manipulate, analyse, interpret and
present data and better appreciate how to critically assess work using the same
methods by peers in the scientific community.
There was also the opportunity to have one to one sessions regarding your own data,
which was extremely useful. It allowed me to immediately apply the newly learned
methods, which are all directly applicable to the data I have collected so far in my PhD.
Attending the course “Advancing in R” helped me to become more competent and
confident in dealing with my own data, which will increase the quality of my scientific
work and help me to become more independent as a scientist.
Overall this course has been extremely beneficial to me in terms of understanding,
conducting and interpreting my data.