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Research Bazaar - R Stream

Participants enrolled in the "Programming and Data Analysis in R" stream at the Research Bazaar conference will attend a Software Carpentry workshop on the first two days. The mission of the Software Carpentry project is to help researchers be more productive by teaching them basic computing skills. Researchers often spend much of their time wrestling with software, but most are self-taught programmers. As a result, they spend hours doing things that should take minutes, reinvent a lot of wheels, and still don't know if their results are reliable. To tackle this problem, Software Carpentry runs two-day workshops at hundreds of sites around the world. These hands-on workshops cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, and task automation. Participants are be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

Who: The workshop is restricted to Research Bazaar attendees who signed up for the "Programming and Data Analysis with R" stream.

Where: Room 202, Old Metallurgy Building (map).

Requirements: Participants are asked to bring their laptop. They will be given access to the Data Intensive Tools for the Cloud (DIT4C) environment on the NeCTAR Research Cloud, so it's critical that this laptop is able to connect to either the UniWireless or Eduroam wifi networks (see wifi and DIT4C login instructions below). The DIT4C environment has all the required software installed, however there are software installation instructions below for participants who would like to install the software on their own laptop. Also note that participants are required to abide by Software Carpentry's Code of Conduct.

Contact: Please mail scottcr@unimelb.edu.au for more information.

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Schedule

The class schedule will be released closer to the event. As well as attending this Software Carpentry workshop, people who signed up for the "Programming and Data Analysis with R" stream will have the opportunity to attend a number of other elective classes at ResBaz.

Etherpad: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/2015-02-16-resbaz-r.
We will use this Etherpad for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.

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Syllabus

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Setup

Wifi

Prior to the workshop, University of Melbourne staff/students should ensure that their laptop can connect to UniWireless. Instructions on how to do this and where to get assistance can be found here. Attendees from other Australian universities should find out (from the IT website of their home institution) how to connect to the Eduroam wireless network.

Create a DIT4C Account

During the week prior to the workshop, one of the instructors will email you the compute node name and access code you'll need for the Data Intensive Tools for the Cloud (DIT4C) environment that is hosted on the NeCTAR Research Cloud. Once you've got that name and code, navigate to the DIT4C homepage and follow these instructions:

1. Click the "login" button and proceed to login. You can use your institution username and password if you're at an Australian university, otherwise use your GitHub credentials (everyone creates a GitHub account during the Git lessons anyway, so you'll just be getting in early).
2. Go to the "compute nodes" tab and click "claim compute node access".
3. From the drop down menu, select the name of the compute node that the instructor emailed to you and enter the corresponding access code.
4. Go to the "containers" tab and add a new container named after yourself (e.g. johnsmith). The reason for this is that container names are unique (i.e. you can't have the same container name as anyone else in the room). Select an "RStudio" image from the drop down menu and then hit the create button.
5. When the container is "on", its name should turn blue and you can click on it to launch your environment in a new tab of your browser.
6. Once you're finished for the day, simply close all the extra tabs that have opened up and turn your container "off". When you come back tomorrow, simply switch back to the 'on' position to continue using that container.

(Optional) Software Installation

The DIT4C environment comes with all the required software pre-installed, however if you would like to install the software on your own computer (either before or after the workshop), here are the instructions to do so.