Part IA Mathematical Biology Practical Classes
It is increasingly important for biologists to have computer skills. We therefore introduce NST IA Mathematical Biology students to the statistical programming language, R. Our goal is that by the end of the course, all students should be able to work comfortably with data and to undertake some simple computer programming.
The Mathematical Biology R course is run online every Thursday. Each session will start with a short pre-recorded introductory video from that week's Senior Demonstrator. After watching this, students should download copies of the task sheet and any required data files from the Practical Resources section of the Mathematical Biology Moodle site, and then work their way through the task sheet. If students run into problems or have any questions they should post a request for help on the Help Desk forum for that week's practical session. If the issue can be addressed simply, students will receive a text-based reply via the Help Desk forum. However, if the issue is more complicated or if a student requests it, Demonstrators can make face-to-face contact via a Teams call, which allows screen sharing.
An important objective for the first few weeks of Michaelmas Term will be to ensure that students have both R and RStudio properly installed on their personal laptop or tablet. Students who do not have access to appropriate equipment should discuss this with their Director of Studies.
Please click here for instructions on how to install R and RStudio on your personal system.
If you still appear to have trouble running RStudio after following these instructions, please contact a Demonstrator using the Help Desk forum at the start of the next scheduled practical session.