Transitioning from Excel to R: Focus on Learning High Value-Added Skills

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Interested in DataGeek Workshops?

Contact Mary Hamman regarding future opportunities.

Transitioning from Excel to R:
Focus on Learning High Value-Added Skills

Two schedules are offered for your convenience. The same content is provided via each schedule. You choose which schedule works best for you!

4 Weeks 
~5 hours/week 

1 Week 
~20 hours/week

March 1–27 March 22–27

Workshop participants will meet virtually for a Live Project Day:
10 a.m.–4 p.m., Central Time, Saturday, March 27

Big DataExcel is still a workhorse for business, but it has some critical drawbacks. It does not handle large data sets very efficiently and it is sometimes tough to document your work clearly so you and others can reproduce it. Also, unless you’re careful about protecting sheets, it can be easy to accidentally contaminate your data. For all of these reasons and more, learning to use a scripting language—like R—is highly valuable. Whether you’ve already started to learn and could use some help or have had this on your to-do list for awhile but haven’t yet taken the leap, this workshop will meet you where you are and help you to extract the most benefit out of your time spent learning R.

Learning Outcomes

  • Import and export data to/from R and Excel to facilitate workflows that leverage the best of both tools.
  • Identify opportunities for R skills to create the greatest job performance gains and prioritize a learning pathway focused on those goals.
  • Save time and reduce errors by replacing point-and-click or copy-paste actions in Excel with script in R.
  • Document workflow using RMarkdown to reduce recall errors and avoid miscommunication when sharing work