Week 1 Notes - Course Introduction

Published

September 8, 2025

Key Concepts Learned

  • Course Overview, Structure, and Grading
  • R, Quarto, and Github Basics

Coding Techniques

  • Tidyverse vs R
    • read.csv reads data as data frames
    • read_csv reads data as tibbles (more intuitively formatted)
  • Renaming Variables
    • to refer to variables with column names that have spaces, you need to surround them with backticks ```
  • Quarto Features
    • upgraded version of RMD that can work with R, Python, and other languages
    • can even be used for websites and slides

Questions & Challenges

  • I need more practice on understanding workflows in Github and Quarto

Connections to Policy

  • NA for this week

Reflection

  • Have used RMD in the past, so excited to learn this new workflow with Quarto
  • Applying this knowledge - I may also look at using Github to create a personal portfolio
    • Github is considered the industry standard for portfolios and version control