Course Introduction

Our R courses were designed by Tamara Shatar, who holds a PhD in Agricultural Data Science. She focused her extensive experience and skills in modelling using machine learning, simulation and other techniques to create a course with depth and applicability. 

The course is consistently well-reviewed by students. 

"The course was really good, the resources provided to help after the course are excellent. I was a bit overwhelmed at the beginning trying to learn a new language, but I was put at ease and we went through the content at a pace that I could understand." - R Basics Brisbane 

"Great structure, material and manual. I have completed programming courses before but this one just made more sense! Looking forward to the Intermediate course." - R Beginner Sydney

What is R? 

R is an open-source and free programming language that was developed for statistical analysis and the production of high-quality graphics. It has long been popular with statisticians and academics who make up part of the large active user community behind R. This community has contributed over 15,000 packages that extend the base functionality of R, making it easy to implement a vast range of techniques for data manipulation, analysis and visualisation. 

Can I run R Scripts in Power BI?

Yes, our recorded webinar introduces running R Scripts in Power BI. It's worth investing the time to get comfortable with this topic and understand the possible applications for your workplace. R scripts in Power BI

How should I prepare for my online course?

R Programming Basics

Install R - https://cran.csiro.au/ - select base

Install RStudio - https://rstudio.com/products/rstudio/ - RStudio Desktop (open source ed.)

Install Hmisc and psych packages. Open up RStudio and go to Tools > Install Packages. Under Packages, type in 'Hmisc'.  Repeat this process for 'psych'.

If you have difficulty installing the packages, go to Tools > Global Options > Packages and untick 'Use secure download method for HTTP'.

R Programming Beginner

Install R - https://cran.csiro.au/ - select base

Install RStudio - https://rstudio.com/products/rstudio/ - RStudio Desktop (open source ed.)

Install the tidyverse Open up RStudio and go to Tools > Install Packages. Under Packages type 'tidyverse'. 

R Programming Intermediate

Install R - https://cran.csiro.au/ - select base

Install RStudio - https://rstudio.com/products/rstudio/ - RStudio Desktop (open source ed.)

Install the Hmisc and tidyverse packages (see instructions above)

Machine Learning in R

Install R - https://cran.csiro.au/ - select base

Install RStudio - https://rstudio.com/products/rstudio/ - RStudio Desktop (open source ed.)

Install Power BI Desktop.

Download the dataset from https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/bike+sharing+dataset

Go to Data Folder and download the zip file. We will be working with the hour file.

Run the following in RStudio (or install each of these packages):

install.packages("DescTools")

install.packages("factoextra")

install.packages("tidyverse")

install.packages("rfm")

install.packages("cluster")

install.packages("rpart")

install.packages("rpart.plot")

install.packages("caret")

install.packages("ranger")

install.packages("Metrics")

install.packages("randomForest")

Please run the following test to ensure that Power BI is detecting your installation of R and installed contributed packages.

You must have installed the tidyverse package to your machine prior to running this script. If you have not done this already, please install it from RStudio and then do the following.

Open the Power BI file named Test.

Click on Transform Data.

With the query, Test selected:

Click on Run R Script

This will open a window. Under the existing text, copy in the following:

library(tidyverse)

y <- dataset %>% sqrt

If you are asked about privacy levels, grant access or ignore.

If this is successful, you should see a table containing the square roots of the numbers 1-10.

If it fails and returns an error, please email [email protected]