Hello, and welcome to Winter 2014 R Club! This term, R Club only meets EVERY OTHER week (starting week 1). On the off weeks, Bayes Club meets at the same time and place – come join if you like. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get our hands on a computer lab for this term, so both R Club and Bayes Club meet in Franklin 164, which is just a conference room. You’ll need to bring a laptop. If you have trouble getting a computer you can bring, please get in touch with me (rosem@uoregon.edu), and we’ll hunt down a laptop for you.

R Club is a venue for us to practice using R, share resources with each other, and learn cool new stuff. There is no graded homework or exams, but you are strongly encouraged to complete practice problems since you’ll never learn to code by just reading and talking. Getting your hands dirty is a must. If you’re new to R, you probably want to work through the UCLA slides and the practice problems, starting with the material from week 1. More advanced users should think about starting a project, or joining an existing effort, such as the 611/612/613 translation to R. No matter what you’re working on or what level of expertise you have, please take advantage of the fact that we’re all working together and ask questions! Programming is hard, but there’s no need to suffer in silence. Suffer loudly.

There are two small but important changes to the policy for students officially registered for R Club (i.e. CRN 28447).
1) We will be taking attendance – if you don’t come to R Club, you can’t get credit for it. Makes sense, right?
2) Also, by the end of term, you must send an email to Sanjay (sanjay@uoregon.edu), the professor supervising the course, with a self-evaluation describing what you did and what you learned this term. A page or so is plenty. We’ll post a reminder here on the blog when it gets close to the end of term to help you remember to submit the self-evaluation.

If you’re not officially registered for R Club, you don’t need to send anything to Sanjay.

See you every other Tuesday at 2pm, in Franklin room 164!

Happy coding.