Sept 4-5, 2024
10am - 3pm SAST
Instructors: Marion Walton, Alette Schoon
Helpers: Muya Koloko
The Carpentries project comprises the Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry communities of Instructors, Trainers, Maintainers, helpers, and supporters who share a mission to teach foundational computational and data science skills to researchers.
Data Carpentry develops and teaches workshops on the fundamental data skills needed to conduct research. Its target audience is researchers who have little to no prior computational experience, and its lessons are domain specific, building on learners' existing knowledge to enable them to quickly apply skills learned to their own research. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.
For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Good Enough Practices for Scientific Computing".
Who: The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.
Where: Beattie Lab, Beattie Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.
When: Sept 4-5, 2024; 10am - 3pm SAST Add to your Google Calendar.
Requirements: RStudio has been made available on lab machines. Participants are also encouraged to bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. We will make some time at the end of the workshop to assist you if you would like to use RStudio on your own laptop. If you want to follow the lesson on your own laptop, you will need to pre-install the specific software packages listed below.
Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. The workshop organizers have checked that:
We are dedicated to providing a positive and accessible learning environment for all. We do not require participants to provide documentation of disabilities or disclose any unnecessary personal information. However, we do want to help create an inclusive, accessible experience for all participants. We encourage you to share any information that would be helpful to make your Carpentries experience accessible. To request an accommodation for this workshop, please fill out the accommodation request form. If you have questions or need assistance with the accommodation form please email us.
Glosario is a multilingual glossary for computing and data science terms. The glossary helps learners attend workshops and use our lessons to make sense of computational and programming jargon written in English by offering it in their native language. Translating data science terms also provides a teaching tool for Carpentries Instructors to reduce barriers for their learners.
Contact: Please email marion.walton@uct.ac.za or A.Schoon@ru.ac.za> for more information.
Roles: To learn more about the roles at the workshop (who will be doing what), refer to our Workshop FAQ.
Who can attend?: The workshop is primarily designed for the following students:
If you are interested in attending this workshop, please contact marion.walton@uct.ac.za for more information
Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct. This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.
We will use this collaborative document for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.
Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.
Helper for today: Muya Koloko
| 10am-3pm SAST |
| Before starting | Pre-workshop survey | Zip file of workshop data.
| Session 1 | Intro (Marion Walton & Alette Schoon) |
| 10:00 - 10:45 | Quick and dirty data viz (Marion Walton, Mendi Lab) |
| 10:45 - 11:00 | Short break |
| 11:00 - 11:30 | Rawgraphs (Alette Schoon, Mendi Lab) Datavizcatalogue Coolors Inkscape |
| 11:30 - 12:00 | Transcribing and visualising audio (Alette Schoon, Mendi Lab) MacWhisper, aTrain |
| Session 2 | R for Social Scientists I (Alette Schoon & Marion Walton, Beattie Lab) |
| 13:00 - 13:50 | Before we start - Cooking up stuff in RStudio (Alette Schoon, Beattie Lab) |
| 13:50 - 14:00 | Short break |
| 14:00 - 14:20 | Introduction to R (Marion Walton, Beattie Lab) |
| 14:20 - 14:50 | Starting with Data (Marion Walton, Beattie Lab) |
Helper for today: Muya Koloko
| 10am-3pm SAST |
| Session 1 | R for Social Scientists II (Marion Walton & Alette Schoon, Beattie Lab) |
| 10:00 - 10:45 | Data Wrangling with dplyr (Marion Walton, Beattie Lab) |
| 10:45-11:00 | Short break |
| 11:00 - 12:00 | Data Wrangling with tidyr (Alette Schoon, Beattie Lab) |
| 12:00 - 13:00 | Long break |
| Session 2 | R for Social Scientists II |
| 13:00 - 13:50 | Data Visualisation with ggplot2 (Marion Walton, Beattie Lab) |
| 13:50 - 14:00 | Short break |
| 14:00 - 15:00 | Final wrap up and Post survey |
To participate in a Data Carpentry workshop, you will need access to software as described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.
We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.
The setup instructions for the Data Carpentry Social Sciences workshops (with R) can be found at the workshop overview site.