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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.

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Core Courses

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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.

My team is continuing to use the R we learned from you and your team - it's been a game changer for us and we've only scratched the surface on what we know how to do.

Kirstin O'Dell
Kirstin O'Dell Senior Research Associate, Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services, Portland State University

Really helpful and clear!

Angelica Maria Moreno Rojas

Thank you for a very clear intro to demystify R!

Sonali Rammohan Stanford Seed

This course is a gem. It rests on a solid perspective as to how to bring R and allied resources in a comprehensive toolbox. It allows one to understand how to use R from building a data frame to creating meaningful graphics and reports. I can’t help but to marvel at Dr. David Keyes’ ability to bring together different r packages and making them accessible to the rest of us.

Dr. Alberto F Cabrera
Dr. Alberto F Cabrera Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland

This setup was exactly what I was looking for to have resources in bite size chunks to practice and to refer back to. I knew I was too anxious to try to teach myself, but by starting the process with the course, I feel ready to open R, and find resources to do what I want to do with it, and have a foundation if I ever take a course again that works exclusively in it. I would highly recommend this course!

Morgan Psychology graduate student

This course really helped me demystify the process of getting started in R!! I was so so scared and waited until the last necessary moment to get started and this guided me to get to a place where I can be successful and confident. Highly recommend!

Bridger Menlove
Bridger Menlove Graduate Research Assistant, Fadool Lab

Great instruction, I would recommend this course. Thanks.

Nina Liimatta UMKC

As we get to the end of the course, I'm feeling so much stronger in my ability to work with my data and make the visualizations I need. In the first part of the course I kept thinking, "I'm not sure if this is more time-efficient than using Stata"; later on I felt that it would be best to do my data wrangling in Stata and my data vis for maps and complex plots in R; and now I'm starting most of my new projects in R, as RMarkdown files, and planning forthcoming analyses with collaborators in R.

Hannah Koenker
Hannah Koenker Project Director, REACH Malaria

I have attended a few R courses, some of which were well taught, but nowhere near as practical as yours. I'll certainly continue subscribing and be considering your future courses.

Rod Ling
Rod Ling Data Analyst

Very good explanations about how to using r, also he doesn't go fast so you can understand way better everything. Highly reccomendated :)

Diego Student
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;...