BIOSM 2350 R by the Sea: Data Analysis in the Marine Sciences

Course description

This course introduces students to basic data analysis and programming tools commonly used throughout the life sciences. Students will develop skills in R programming, including data wrangling and cleaning, the principles of open and reproducible science, building maps, and simple linear regression. In the first half of the course (on-line), students will learn R fundamentals and then, in the second half, relocate to Shoals Marine Lab (Gulf of Maine; in-person) to apply their coding skills to long-term data sets (intertidal counts, video fisheries observations, marine mammal censuses), as well as to biological data that they collect in the field around Appledore Island. No programming experience is necessary. Beginners are welcome, but those with R background will also expand their programming and data collection skills.


Outcome 1: Students will be able to: implement best practices for data management.

Outcome 2: Students will be able to: Compare and contrast different tools for data management (Excel, SQL, etc.)

Outcome 3: Students will be able to: Use R statistical software for basic data cleaning and statistics.

Outcome 4: Students will be able to: Use R markdown to build reproducible workflows and documents.

Outcome 5: Students will be able to: Adhere to data ethics, especially related to data related to vertebrates.

Outcome 6: Students will be able to: Load, clean, and plot simple spatial data in R.

Lecture/Computer Lab course for a total of 3 credits over two weeks through Shoals Marine Lab. The first week of the course is online and the second week takes place on Appledore Island.

Prerequisites

Intro statistics and biology courses recommended, but not required.