R Learning Notes

Zhenting HE / 2025-02-19

About the start of this blog #

This learning note series was started during an anthropological methodology course.

In that course, methods were not just presented as abstract techniques, but as ways of asking questions, organising evidence, and understanding society. When we started looking at the data in more detail, R wasn’t seen as a “technical requirement” but as something that could help us think about the methods we were using.

I started learning R in this context — not to become a programmer, but to better understand how data is produced, processed, and interpreted in research.

The reason for R, as seen from the point of view of anthropology #

From an anthropological point of view, data is never neutral.
Variables are defined, categories are constructed, and numbers carry assumptions.

Learning R made these processes easier for me to see. Writing code means clearly explaining each step of the process, which is very similar to the ideas in anthropology about reflexivity, transparency, and interpretation.

R is more than just software. It is just part of the research process.

What these notes are (and are not)

These are the notes:

Rather than formal tutorials, it is better to use personal learning records.
The main thing is to understand things, not to be efficient.

  • This text is for people learning social science and humanities.

They are not meant to be complete manuals or the best possible ways of doing things. Instead, they show how I learned, where I hesitated, and how certain ideas eventually made sense.

Series Structure #

The notes roughly follow my own learning path:

  1. Getting started with R and RStudio
  2. The basics of data types and structures
  3. Moving data between computers
  4. Changing data
  5. Show the data visually.
  6. The most common packages and day-to-day workflows

You can read each post on its own, but when you read them all together you can see how her skills and understanding have gradually built up over time.

This is for people who are learning too.

If you are coming from a background in media, anthropology, sociology, or other social sciences, I hope these notes feel familiar rather than scary.

You don’t have to be an expert at everything at the same time.
You learn best by repeating, making mistakes and thinking about what you have done.

This series is based on my own learning journey.

#R

Last modified on 2025-02-19