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R for the Rest of Us

Learn to use the most powerful tool for working with data.
Even if you've never coded before.

Supporting forward looking organizations

Core Courses

New to R?

From "what's R?" to "I love R" in three self-paced courses.
Start here when you're just starting out.

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R in 3 Months

R in 3 Months

Looking for even more? R in 3 Months is a cohort-based program to help you finally learn R.

High-Quality Instruction

With R in 3 Months, you’ll get high-quality instruction that will guide you from R newbie to R expert.

Personalized Feedback

You'll work on your own code every week and get in-depth feedback.

Supportive Community

You'll be on this journey alongside a supportive community that will help you learn and keep you accountable to yourself.

Testimonials

Don't Take it From Us

Our learners say it best.

Thank you for the step-by-step tutorial and helpful tips!

Maria Trinh Student at WU Vienna

A great introduction to the fundamentals of R and RStudio.

Jeremiah Graham
Jeremiah Graham Pre-Award Grants and Contracts Administrator, University of Missouri-Kansas City

This is the best R lesson for all beginners. Best Tutor :)

Sylvester Adetor

Thank you for a very thorough and practical course about an important and initial task in data handling. In my own project, I am to work with data that are very far from tidy, and I am very grateful for the tools that you have provided me with. I was not aware that we can do so much with the data to make it more ready for statistical analysis.

Kjell Hoeyland
Kjell Hoeyland PhD candidate @ NTNU

I loved the content covered during the course; it was a basic and essential course, informing some fundamentals and uses of R. For those who don't have much practice and are looking to get to know R, like me, I recommend it.

Hirlanda Brito Farias
Hirlanda Brito Farias Agricultural Engineer

This is a terrific resource for learning R! I cannot believe it is free. The videos are well-made, and the information is extremely helpful. Kudos to the R for the rest of us platform, David, and the rest of the team.

Sinibaldo R. Romero Arocha
Sinibaldo R. Romero Arocha Great free resource to learn R

Absolutely, R for the Rest of Us was very helpful and informative. The content was clear, structured, and easy to follow. David did an amazing job breaking down complex topics into manageable, real-world examples. I'm walking away feeling much more confident using R in my public health work.

DT Lindsey
DT Lindsey Public Health Fellow - Michigan Fitness Foundation

This is one of the best introduction to R courses that I have taken. It is simple yet very powerful. I have learnt a lot of things in one day which were very confusing to me for the past 2 years. Thank you for opening my eyes and allowing me to see the possibilites that are there in R. I highly recommend this course to anyone starting out in R.

Justine Kahonde
Justine Kahonde Personal

Before starting R in 3 Months, I had completed several courses on R. However, they all felt generic—focused more on transitioning from learning to simply acing exercise questions, which, in the age of AI, isn't particularly challenging. This course, however, was different. It felt like I was truly in a classroom setting. Even while watching the pre-recorded videos, it struck the perfect balance between self-paced learning and providing the push I needed to stay motivated and engaged. Without a doubt, R in 3 Months is the best course I’ve taken this year.

Tosan Okome
Tosan Okome Registered Nurse

David and Charlie are incredibly knowledgeable about R and the course, while challenging, is engaging. The level of individualized coaching and feedback was extraordinary.

Catherine Roller White
Catherine Roller White CRW Consulting
Consulting

Let Us Handle the R

High-quality data visualization, workflow improvements, and custom packages to enable organizations to communicate more effectively and more efficiently.

Childhood Bereavement Estimation Model Reports

Judi’s House/JAG Institute, a nonprofit in Colorado, provides support regarding childhood bereavement. In 2018, they created the Childhood Bereavement Estimation Model® (CBEM) to estimate rates of children losing a parent or sibling before adulthood. Annual CBEM reports were produced, but racial and ethnic data breakdowns were lacking until 2021. Partnering with R for the Rest of Us, they generated high-quality, easy-to-understand reports on bereavement disparities by race and ethnicity. These national and state-level reports, created using parameterized reporting and RMarkdown, help advance their vision that no child should be alone in grief.

Immunization Agenda 2030 Reports

The World Health Organization's Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) aims to improve global vaccine access. To better report progress, the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins University partnered with R for the Rest of Us in 2023. They produced 72 user-friendly country-level reports in English and French, using parameterized reporting. These reports highlight individual country progress, use less technical language than previous online scorecards, and are in a printable PDF format for review.

NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region R Training Website

Improving R Training for NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region

NOAA Fisheries West Coast region (NOAA WCR) aims to maintain healthy fish populations along the west coast, with offices in California, Oregon, and Washington. Recently, they have increased their use of R, arranging internal trainings and seeking additional support in 2024 from R for the Rest of Us. They created a 6-week training program focusing on R fundamentals, advanced R topics, and GitHub integration. By the end, NOAA WCR staff efficiently produced technical memoranda and improved their workflows using R and Quarto.
Blog

Blog

Learn to use the most powerful tool for working with data.
Even if you've never coded before.

Use shadows in ggplot to highlight findings

April 24, 2025

In our consulting work, we make a lot of the data visualization for parameterized reporting . It’s something I spoke about in my 2024 Cascadia R Conf talk, How to Make a Thousand Plots Look Good: Data Viz Tips for Parameterized Reporting . One example I gave in this talk came from our work with the Johns Hopkins International Vaccine Access Center and the World Health Organization . In this project, we made reports for the Immunization Agenda 2030 project, which tracks the progress countries...

Create your own custom {ggplot2} theme

April 3, 2025

Creating custom themes in {ggplot2} lets you elevate your data visualizations from standard to standout. Whether you’re aiming for a polished, brand-consistent look for your organization or a unique aesthetic that reflects your personal style, a custom theme function makes it easy to apply your design to all figures with a single line of code. In this tutorial, we’ll cover: the essentials of the powerful ggplot2::theme() function, including how to adjust fonts, colors, sizing, and spacing;...

Hide text labels with small values to make charts made in ggplot easier to read

March 13, 2025

One issue that we often face when making data visualization in reports is text not fitting into graphs. This happened to us when working on reports for the Connecticut Data Collaborative and the Partnership for Strong Communities in Connecticut. The reports we made , which show key demographic and housing indicators for towns and counties across the state, have bar charts that show the housing cost burden for renters and home owners in the state. In addition to the categories severe burden...