BIOSM 2350
R by the Sea: Data Analysis in the Marine Sciences
This course introduces students to basic data analysis and programming tools commonly used throughout the life sciences. Students will develop skills in R programming, including data wrangling and cleaning, the principles of open and reproducible science, building maps, and simple linear regression. In the first half of the course (on-line), students will learn R fundamentals and then, in the second half, relocate to Shoals Marine Lab (Gulf of Maine; in-person) to apply their coding skills to long-term data sets (intertidal counts, video fisheries observations, marine mammal censuses), as well as to biological data that they collect in the field around Appledore Island.
Topics
- Students will be able to implement best practices for data management.
- Students will be able to compare and contrast different tools for data management (Excel, SQL, etc.)
- Students will be able to use R statistical software for basic data cleaning and statistics.
- Students will be able to use R markdown to build reproducible workflows and documents.
- Students will be able to adhere to data ethics, especially related to data related to vertebrates.
- Students will be able to load, clean, and plot simple spatial data in R.
Official roster learning outcomes
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026-2027