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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.
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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.

An excellent clear outline of some of the key fundamental processes in R enabling you to import, clean, process, visualise and communicate your data. Great teaching!

Mark Kirby Assistant Lecturer, Open University

I've been working with R for several years, but looked at this intro just for the heck of it because I keep hearing about R for the Rest of Us. To my shock, I learned a few new very useful tricks. David is a clear and thoughtful teacher. Don't let the short videos or his calm presence trick you into thinking this is too simplistic. It is easy because David is clear. But he's also gently (subtly) telling you some REALLY important stuff. He's laying down an excellent foundation for your future work with R. Don't skip this. Build your good foundation with David's guidance. I'm so glad I finally decided to give R for the Rest of Us a look; now I need to go look at more of it.

Steve Meyer Data Scientist and Research Analyst

This is approachable and accessible. I'd recommend this program to a friend as a great way to learn enough about R to take away the fear of the difficulty of learning anything relating to code.

John Jenson

I was overwhelmed with the prospect of starting to use R, especially given all the many websites and resources available online. This course was exactly what I needed - clear and organized ideas, step-by-step instructions, and the use of real examples and practice strategies. Such a wonderful resource!

Benjamin Haywood
Benjamin Haywood Director, National Non-Profit Organization

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

The many hours I've spent in front of my computer crunching this data in R has me wondering why I ever did anything else with my life.

Leslie MacColman
Leslie MacColman Department of Sociology, Ohio State University

Thank you for a very clear intro to demystify R!

Sonali Rammohan Stanford Seed

Hello, i really appreaciated the way the actions in R were described. However, i still struggle to understand the concrete benefit of R. I am wondering, wheter R can do controlling reports as well ? I mean, i work for a retail company, and every month i have to prepare revenue, profit reports of sales of the different product groups. I usually prepare these reports in Excel..... so i monthly have to export all the necassary data from our ERP-System into Excel sheets and then i have to collect and prepare them in one report. Do u think R Studio can do the same thing so that it is less effort for me?

Julia Kaiser
Julia Kaiser Product Controlling

Its very useful course for beginner! Thank you so much :)

Olena Nosovets Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute
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.

How to make heatmaps in ggplot

May 1, 2025

Heatmaps are a common way of representing data. In this blog post, I'll show you how to make your own heatmaps using ggplot. In the process, you'll learn a bit about working with the {sf} package, specifically the st_make_grid() function to make a grid, the st_intersection() function to clip the boundaries of your geography to the grid you create, and st_join() to do spatial joins. This blog post is adapted from a lesson in the Mapping with R course . If you want to learn to make heatmaps...

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;...