R programming for beginners

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

R programming for beginners

This course website accompanies the introductory R course taught in the Master GPE (CERDI / IHEDD). It is designed for students with no prior experience of programming or data analysis: 6 sessions of 3 hours (18 hours in total).

The running thread is a single question, “Growth, health and inequality: what do the data say about developing countries?”, explored with World Bank (WDI) and World Inequality Database (WID) data.

Each session page mixes the R code with charts of the results, diagrams of the key concepts (the pipe, joins, reshaping, how a report is built), short “Key idea” and “Common mistake” boxes, and exercises with collapsible solutions.

Objectives

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

Work comfortably in R and RStudio.
Import, clean and combine real-world datasets.
Describe data and estimate simple regressions.
Communicate results with clear figures, maps and reproducible Quarto reports.

Sessions

Dataviz workshop (in French): Atelier dataviz, une figure pour la note au ministre.

See also the resources page for references and data sources.

Before the first session

Install R and then RStudio Desktop.
Download the course data archive (data.zip) and unzip it in a folder you will use for the course.

Last updated: 14 October 2026.

R | Pierre Beaucoral

R programming for beginners

R programming for beginners

Objectives

Sessions

Before the first session