How to get help in R

Tips for looking for answers and asking questions about R

Author
Published

October 29, 2020

slides materials video

Overview

This session will be led by Ella Kaye - an R enthusiast and statistics PhD researcher at the University of Warwick. In the session, Ella will talk us through different ways to get help when you get stuck on a problem in R. We’ll cover how and where to look for answers and how to ask and post good questions that make it easy for others to help you, including a demo of the excellent reprex and datapasta packages. So whether you’re an R novice or more experienced R user, hopefully there’ll be some useful tips for you!

Event details

Event: R Ladies Coventry (the inaugural talk)

Date: October 29th, 2020

Location: Zoom

I gave a very slightly updated version of the talk again three months later:

Event: bseeR

Date: January 28th, 2021

Location: Microsoft Teams

Key points

  • When faced with a question/problem, have a good look for an answer in R itself and/or online

  • Don’t be shy about asking questions!

  • Write reproducible examples, best with the {reprex} package

  • Give thought to where you ask/post your question

  • Give back by helping others

Slides

Keyboard shortcuts for slideshow (once you’ve clicked inside it):

  • Use and to navigate through the slides.

  • Use o for an overview of all slides.

  • Use h to see a list of other shortcuts

    • f to toggle full screen not working, but the rest are fine.

    • For full screen slides, go to slides then press f.

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Citation

BibTeX citation:
@online{kaye2020,
  author = {Kaye, Ella},
  title = {How to Get Help in {R}},
  date = {2020-10-29},
  url = {https://ellakaye.co.uk/talks/2020-10-29_how-to-get-help-in-r/},
  langid = {en}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Kaye, Ella. 2020. “How to Get Help in R.” October 29, 2020. https://ellakaye.co.uk/talks/2020-10-29_how-to-get-help-in-r/.