Consider that everything that we have done in the textbook so far has been about
applying tools that have already been constructed. We have been using tools, not
making tools.
Sometime you will reach the point where you feel that you could improve a tool,
or you may find a situation for which no tool exists.
The improvement that you believe that you have, or the situation that you have
not encountered before, may not be large or sophisticated, but still you would
like to create or improve a tool.
At that you moment you have become a programmer. Now the authors would
like to give you a gentle introduction to programming.
You can study programming deeply and seriously, or you can use it casually to
solve problems that are meaningful maybe only to you, but you should have an
introduction to programming in R, even if it is only at the level of writing
simple functions and iterating processes to improve your workflow.
Chapters 25 Functions and 26 Iteration will give you enough
practice to prepare you if you choose to go further in future data science
projects or programming courses.
Programming is problem solving and there is no one way to program because there
is no one way to solve a problem. If you have some experience programming in
another context, then some of this will seem more natural, but you can still
use what is being presented to increase your skills and understand more about
what you can do with R.
Assessment deadlines will be 11:59pm each Saturday.
All assessments are submitted to the Homework Folder inside your assigned
Google Drive folder.
There are no make-ups for missed assessments. Contact me before a deadline
if you have an issue meeting the deadline and we will find a mutually
agreeable solution.
Homework
Homework 14 (due Saturday, April 19)
The instructions for your homework are contained in the R script
file
homework_14.R.