Introduction to R

R is a very powerful and versatile computing environment, and is widely used by statisticians, economists, political scientists, etc. R is developed by its users, and researchers from many different fields have contributed to making R into the powerful statistical program it is today. What this means it that user can write their own R code, or adjust existing code according to their needs, and share this code with others. But this also means that there are a vast number of statistical tools and methods implemented in R, and we will only be able to scratch the surface of R’s vast potential in this short introductory course. However, the goal is to provide students with enough knowledge of how R works so they can learn new techniques themselves and/or follow other courses taught in R.

About the lecturer

Dr Florian Weiler joined the University of Kent in 2016 as a lecturer in Quantitative Politics. His research currently focuses on international environmental problems, and on the role of interest groups for national and international policy-making processes. Previous to joining the University of Kent, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bamberg (Germany). In this role, he taught various courses on quantitative methods, international negotiations, international environmental agreements, and interest group politics. He also taught statistics at the ECPR Winter School on Methods and Techniques in 2015 and 2016. He obtained his PhD from ETH Zurich (Switzerland) in 2013.