Program Evaluation
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advice (4)
FAQs (5)
getting started (4)

News & FAQs

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February 3, 2026 at 9:44 AM Week 3 tips and FAQs
  • What’s the difference between statistical significance and substantial significance?
  • Can we measure substantial significance with statistics?
  • What are all the different ways we can look at model coefficients?
  • How do I change the reference category for a categorical variable?
FAQs
January 28, 2026 at 4:24 PM Week 2.5 tips and FAQs
  • My p-values are showing up as 2.3e-7. What does that mean?
  • Sometimes R says that my p-value is 0—is that correct? Is it okay to have tiny p-values?
  • What’s the difference between the |> and %>% pipes?
  • Why do we sometimes combine code with + and sometimes with |>?
  • Why doesn’t group_by(Species) work but group_by(species) does?
  • Why does aes() sometimes appear in ggplot() and sometimes in geom_WHATEVER()?
  • Installing vs. using packages
  • Why are my axis labels all crowded and on top of each other? How do I fix that?
  • Why isn’t the example code using data = whatever and mapping = aes() in ggplot() anymore? Do we not have to use argument names?
  • What’s the difference between read_csv() vs. read.csv()?
  • What’s the difference between facet_grid() and facet_wrap()?
  • Why do I sometimes see facet_wrap(vars(blah)) and sometimes facet_wrap(~ blah)?
  • What’s the difference between the fill and color aesthetics?
FAQs
January 28, 2026 at 11:52 AM Making cleaner, nicer Quarto documents
  • Render often
  • Check for broken code chunks
  • Check that your text looks okay
  • Don’t install packages in your document
  • Clean up warnings and messages
  • Global chunk options
  • Fancy document settings
  • Chunk names
advice
January 28, 2026 at 1:35 AM Weeks 1–2 tips and FAQs
  • What is the tidyverse?
  • Why do you keep writing package names in {}s? Why do you include ()s after function names?
  • What’s the difference between Source and Visual mode in the editor window?
  • What’s the difference between R Markdown and Quarto?
  • Why don’t I have options to render to PDF (or Word or HTML)?
  • Rendered document format for iCollege
  • What is this thing that we can render to?
  • How does group_by() work? Why did we have to group by island and not body_mass and island?
  • Do you have any tips for remembering all the different functions we’re learning? There are so many!
  • My histogram bars are too wide / too narrow / not visible. How do I fix that?
FAQs
January 28, 2026 at 12:25 AM Copy, paste, and tweak
advice
January 15, 2026 at 2:43 PM Why do you use ✓s for grades?
FAQs
January 15, 2026 at 2:35 PM LLM FAQs
  • Will R ever be fully replaced by AI?
  • Will you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course in the future?
  • Why won’t you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course?
FAQs
January 12, 2026 at 9:57 AM The 30-minute rule and how to ask for help
  • The 30-minute rule
  • Don’t suffer in silence!
  • Use Discord in public
  • Help us help you
  • High resolution questions
  • Unanswered questions
  • Discord question etiquette
  • Student appointments
advice
January 12, 2026 at 9:44 AM First week of class!
getting started
January 5, 2026 at 2:05 PM Building community
  • Class community
  • Online community
advice
January 5, 2026 at 2:02 PM Important R stuff
getting started
January 5, 2026 at 1:26 PM Announcements and updates
getting started
January 5, 2026 at 1:01 PM Welcome to class!
getting started
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Content 2026 by Andrew Heiss
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