Activity 01 - Course Tools

This activity is intended to be completed in over one week, including outside of class preparation work and two class meetings. Note that if you are a “dark mode” web browser user, some of the icons in this and future documents may not be easily viewable to you - I am exploring ways to fix this.

In this repository/directory, you should see the following items:

README-img - a folder containing images that I am embedding within this README.md file. You do not need to do anything with this.
.gitignore - a file that is used to specify what Git can ignore when pushing to GitHub. You do not need to do anything with this.
README.md - the document you are currently reading.
day01-github-rstudio - a folder that contains items for you to complete during the first class meeting.
day02-rstudio-rmarkdown - a folder that contains items for you to complete during the second class meeting.

We will explore most of these items over these next class sessions. Before doing that, you will first make your own copy of this repository. Note that I will often refer to “repositories” as “repos” (or a single “repository” as a “repo”) for the rest of the semester.

Before we get too far, I wanted to share with you our tentative schedule for the semester. I will include this information in your weekly tasks so you do not need to remember all of this.

Week	ISL Content	DF Content
1		Introduction
2
3	Ch 1, Sec 2.1 & 2.2, and Sec 3.0 & 3.1	Ch 1
4	Sec 3.2
5	Sec 3.3	Ch 2
6	Sec 4.0 - 4.2 (Mini-competition 1)	Ch 3
7	Sec 4.3.0 - 4.3.4
8	Sec 4.3.5	Ch 4
9	Spring Break
10	Sec 4.4.0 - 4.4.2	Ch 5
11	Sec 4.6 - 4.7 (Mini-competition 2)
12	Sec 5.0 - 5.2	Ch 6
13	Sec 6.0 - 6.2, 6.4
14	Sec 13.0 - 13.5	Ch 7
15		Conclusion
16	Finals Week

Day 1

If you would like more information about GitHub and Markdown, here are two resources:

This Preparation from the last time I taught STA 518 has videos that provide more details on what Git and GitHub are - though somewhat dated (our world changes so much in 7 years), the concepts/ideas remain the same.
This short (5-10 minutes) interactive Markdown tutorial. Note that if you took STA 518 with me or have used Markdown to author documents extensively in the past, this will be a refresher to you.

Task 1: Forking the Repository

Read these directions first, then work your way through them. Take things slow and ask questions of your neighbors or me. In this GitHub repo (i.e., my repo):

Click on the Fork icon near the upper-right-hand corner. You will be taken to a Create a new fork screen.
Verify that your GitHub username is selected under Owner and that the Repository name is activity01-course-tools with a green check mark (this verifies that you do not already have a GitHub repository with this name).
You may provide a Description if you would like. This is a way to provide some additional, more descriptive, meta information related to the things you did. I like to provide a brief description of what happened.
Verify that Copy the main branch only is selected.
Click on the green Create fork button at the bottom of this page.

You should be taken a copy of this repo that is in your GitHub account. That is, your page title should be username/activity01-course-tools, where username is replaced with your GitHub username. Directly below this, you will see the following message:

forked from gvsu-sta631/activity01-course-tools

You will complete the rest of this activity in your forked copy of the activity01-course-tools repo.

Check in

Take a moment to reflect on what this process is like compared to other methods you have used for sharing documents with others. Talk through these with your neighbors.

Can you sketch out a diagram that relates that previous method/process to this GitHub method?
What was easier about this GitHub method?
What was more difficult about this GitHub method?

Task 2: Exploring a GitHub Repository

For our work this semester, we will not worry about Branches or Issues - though we can look into when working on collaborative items, if you so desire.

When you view repos on github.com, most will have a similar set up. There are a lot of icons, text, regions, etc. in every repo and it can be confusing what exactly you need to do. Whenever we will use a new feature on GitHub, I will provide you with details of what to do and what is happening. For the time being, you can focus on two regions of your new repo.

First, if you are currently reading this text that means that you are viewing the README.md file of this repo. Folk use these files to describe the contents of their repo in some fashion. For example, all of posit’s package repositories have a similar structure that at least provide an overview, installation directions, and usage examples I will use README.md files in STA 631 to describe what is in the repo and provide directions for how you should interact with it. README files take information written in Markdown (.md files) and formats it to look nice on a webpage.

Second, directly above the displayed README.md document you like saw an area that looks similar to a folder/directory that you would interact with on your computer. In fact, once we start to work between RStudio and GitHub, your directory will be identical to your repo! I like to think of a GitHub repo as a folder system that others can view/copy/edit (with permission) rather than needing to zip up an entire folder on my computer and then send it to another person to work with. Repos can contain multiple types of files that use various syntax/text and also include subfolders, sub-subfolders, etc.

Read these directions first, then work through them. Do your best to complete the tasks/directions by 11:59 pm (EST) on Wed, Jan 17.

In your activity01-course-tools repo folder/directory, locate and click into the day01-github-rstudio subfolder.
In the day01-github-rstudio subfolder, you will be greeted by a new README.md file with your tasks/directions to complete.

The rest of this README document contains tasks/directions for the next class meeting.

Day 2

Do not proceed in this document until you have affirmed…

(Note that you do not need to do any of the exercises in these links - I am providing them as resources)

What the main uses for each region/pane in RStudio: https://r4ds.had.co.nz/introduction.html#rstudio.
What an Rmarkdown file is, how to run code in an Rmarkdown file or Console, and how RStudio helps notify you of potential problems in your code: https://r4ds.had.co.nz/workflow-scripts.html and https://r4ds.had.co.nz/r-markdown.html .
What RStudio Projects are, determining where things “live” in RStudio, and the benefits of beginning each R session from a “vanilla” (sessions that do not retain information from previous sessions): https://r4ds.had.co.nz/workflow-projects.html.

Task 1: Force a clean RStudio session

To help us reduce as many unnecessary issues as possible, we will instruct RStudio to not preserve any information between sessions. This is a good standard practice. Read these directions first, then work through them.

In an RStudio session, click on the Tools dropdown menu (along the top) and select “Global Options…”
In the Options pop-up window, ensure you are on the General screen (left-hand menu item).
In the General screen, uncheck the box next to the item that specifies to “Restore .RData into workspace at startup”.
Also in the General screen, for the item that specifies to “Save workspace to .RData on exit:” select Never.
At the bottom of the General screen, click on Apply (to save your changes) and OK (to close the pop-up window).

Note that you will need to do this on each “machine” you use RStudio - the posit Workbench is one machine and if you have RStudio installed on your personal computer that is another machine.

Task 2: The activity

Read these directions first, then work through them. Do your best to complete the tasks/directions by 11:59 pm (EST) on Mon, Jan 22.

In your activity01-course-tools repo folder/directory, locate and click into the day02-rstudio-rmarkdown subfolder.
In the day02-rstudio-rmarkdown subfolder, you will be greeted by a new README.md file with your tasks/directions to complete.

Attribution

This document is based on David Keyes’ tutorial at R for the Rest of Us and Happy Git with R by Jenny Bryan et al.

ian-mbaya / activity01-course-tools Goto Github PK