Syllabus
In this course you will learn how to program in R and how to use R for effective data analysis. You will learn how to install and configure software necessary for a statistical programming environment, discuss generic programming language concepts as they are implemented in a high-level statistical language. The course covers practical issues in statistical computing which includes programming in R, reading data into R, creating informative data graphics, accessing R packages, creating R packages with documentation, writing R functions, debugging, and organizing and commenting R code. Topics in statistical data analysis and optimization will provide working examples.

Objectives
After taking this course you should be able to

Read formatted data into R
Subset, remove missing values from, and clean tabular data
Write custom functions in R to implement new functionality and making use of control structures such as loops and conditonals
Use the R code debugger to identify problems in R functions
Make a scatterplot/boxplot/histogram/image plot and modify a plot with custom annotations
Define a new data class in R and write methods for that class
Lecture Materials
Lecture videos will be released weekly and will be available for the week and thereafter. You are welcome to view them at your convenience. Accompanying each video lecture will be a PDF copy of the slides, unless the lecture is a demo, in which case there will be no lecture slides.

Quizzes
There will be four weekly quizzes that will test your comprehension of the material covered in the lecture material provided that week. The quizzes will consist of multiple choice, true/false, or short answer questions. Each quiz is worth 10 points. You will be allowed 3 attempts to submit each quiz and your maximum score will be taken as the final score.

Quiz Opening/Closing Dates
Quiz 1: 2012-09-24 12:00:00 AM PDT to 2012-09-30 11:59:00 PM PDT
Quiz 2: 2012-10-01 12:00:00 AM PDT to 2012-10-07 11:59:00 PM PDT
Quiz 3: 2012-10-08 12:00:00 AM PDT to 2012-10-14 11:59:00 PM PDT
Quiz 4: 2012-10-15 12:00:00 AM PDT to 2012-10-21 11:59:00 PM PDT
Programming Assignments
There will be two programming assignments that will involve writing R code and R functions. These assignments will allow you to work on your R programming skills and practice writing and debugging code. For each programming assignment you will be asked to write R code or functions that produce output given a certain input. Your grade on the assignment will be based on whether the output your function produces matches the correct output. Details can be found in the descriptions of each programming assignment.

Each programming assignment is worth 30 points and is broken down into sub-parts. For each sub-part you will be allowed an unlimited number of submissions and your latest score will be taken as the final score.

Programming Assignment Due Dates
Programming Assignment 1: 2012-10-07 11:59:00 PM PDT
Programming Assignment 2: 2012-10-21 11:59:00 PM PDT
Technical Information
Regardless of your platform (Windows or Mac) you will need a high-speed Internet connection in order to watch the videos on the Coursera web site. It is possible to download the video files and watch them on your computer rather than stream them from Coursera and this may be preferable for some of you.

Here is some platform-specific information:

Windows
The Coursera web site seems to work best with either the Chrome or the Firefox web browsers. In particular, you may run into trouble if you use Internet Explorer. The Chrome and Firefox browsers can be downloaded from

Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome
Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org
Mac
The Coursera site appears to work well with Safari, Chrome, or Firefox, so any of these browsers should be fine.

Grading
Your grade in this course will consist of performance on four weekly quizzes and two programming assignments. The breakdown of the weighting for these elements is

Week 1 Quiz: 10 points
Week 2 Quiz: 10 points
Week 3 Quiz: 10 points
Week 4 Quiz: 10 points
Programming assignment 1: 30 points
Programming assignment 2: 30 points
There is a maximum of 100 points to obtain in this course through the four quizzes and the two programming assignments.

Performance in this course will be evaluated on a pass/fail basis. The final grade for the course will be based on the total number of points earned across the four quizzes and two programming assignments. In order to receive a passing grade, you must have a earned a total number of points of 70 or more.

Weekly Schedule
Week 1

Introduction and overview
Installing R
Data types, subsetting
Reading/writing data
Week 2

Control structures
Functions
Loop functions
Debugging
Week 3

Simulation
Plotting, visualizing data
Priniciples of data graphics
Week 4

Objected oriented programming
Data abstraction
Regular expressions