Elements of Data Science
SDS 322E

H. Sherry Zhang
Department of Statistics and Data Sciences
The University of Texas at Austin

Fall 2026

Learning objectives

  • Being able to work with an R Markdown document — Your labs/HWs/Projects will be provided in this format, and you’ll need to knit them into a PDF for submission.
  • Of cause, you will need to have R and RStudio installed, and know how to install packages.

Hi - I’m an R script!

https://github.com/tidyverse/dplyr/blob/main/R/summarise.R

  • Code is first class citizens here and all the text and comments need to start with # (#' is a special symbol used for package documentation).

Hi - I’m an R Markdown document!

File > New File > Quarto Document / R Markdown

  • I will be the document you mainly work with in this class.

  • With me, you can

    • include both text and code (in code chunks),
    • run the code to produce output, and
    • render the results to multiple formats such as HTML, PDF, and Word.

Actually, with me, you can also write documents, papers, and books:

https://r4ds.hadley.nz/

The textbooks in this class are written R Markdown (or its newer generation - Quarto).

Actually, with me, you can also create HTML or PDF slides

The slides for this class

Actually, with me, you can also build websites

https://huizezhang-sherry.github.io/SDS322E/

Recall from Monday’s lecture…

https://github.com/SDS322E-26Fall

The repository contains all the class exercises and assessment materials (Lab, Homework, and Projects).

We will instruct you how to get those materials for the class on Wednesday.

How do you get the project from GitHub to local? (1/3)

Open up an RStudio IDE, in the console type

# you only need this once
# install.packages("usethis") 
usethis::create_from_github("SDS322E-26FALL/0102-welcome")

By default it will create the repository on the Desktop, you can also save it at specific location with the destdir argument.

Click the .Rproj file to open up the RStudio IDE:

How do you get the project from GitHub to local? (2/3)

Your top right corner should show: 0102-welcome

How do you get the project from GitHub to local? (3/3)

Click the hello-world.Rmd to open up the R Markdown file.

Git and GitHub

General speaking, you can navigate the course without knowing anything about Git, but you will be able to see and know many things you would otherwise won’t if you do know a little bit about GitHub, e.g. 

  • You can see the source code of the packages we use in the course, and you can also see the source code of the lecture slides.

  • Happy Git with R: https://happygitwithr.com/

Your time

Go through the exercises in the hello-world.Rmd document.

You need to know how to knit an R Markdown document to PDF (which requires a LaTeX installation), as this is the format in which you will submit your assessment.