A Data Carpentry Workshop

CSC - IT Center for Science

Espoo, Finland

 

Mar 18-19, 2015

9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Instructors: François Michonneau, Aleksandra Pawlik

Helpers: Mateusz Kuzak, Philip Lijnzaad, Diana Marek, Damiano Piovesan, Andrea Manconi, Ari-Matti Saren, Gonçalo Antunes

Workshop Information

This Data Carpentry workshop is aimed at researchers in the life sciences at all career stages. Data Carpentry is designed to teach basic concepts, skills and tools for working more effectively with data.

The workshop will cover the following topics:

The participants will need to bring their own laptops configured before the workshop according to the setup instructions.

We especially encourage to register those who may be less familiar with the above topics. There is no prerequisite as to what computing skills and knowledge is required.

Acknowledgements & Support

The workshop is supported by the ELIXIR programme.

Data Carpentry is a partnership of several NSF-funded BIO Centers (NESCent, iPlant, iDigBio, BEACON and SESYNC) and Software Carpentry, and is sponsored by the Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE). The structure and objectives of the curriculum as well as the teaching style are informed by Software Carpentry.

Schedule

Wednesday09:00 - 9:30 Introduction
09:30 - 10:30 Better use of spreadsheets - part 1
10:30 - 11:00 Break
11:00 - 12:00 Better use of spreadsheets - part 2
12:00 - 13:00 Lunch break
13:00 - 14:30 Introduction to R - part 1
14:30 - 15:00 Coffee break
15:00 - 16:45 Introduction to R - part 2
16:45 - 17:00 Wrap-up
     
Thursday 09:00 - 11:00 Working with command line - part 1
11:00 - 11:30 Break
11:30 - 13:00 Working with command line - part 2
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch
14:00 - 15:00 Introduction to data manipulation with SQL - part 1
15:00 - 15:30 Break
15:30 - 16:45 Introduction to data manipulation with SQL- part 2
16:45 - 17:00 Wrap-up and feedback

Venue

CSC, Life Science Center Keilaniemi, Keilaranta 14, Espoo
CSC teaching room on the ground floor (room 1372).

Syllabus

Better use of spreadsheets

  • Formatting data tables in spreadsheets.
  • Common formatting mistakes by spreadsheet users.
  • Dates as data.
  • Basic quality control and data manipulation in spreadsheets.
  • Exporting data from spreadsheets.
  • Caveats of popular data and file formats.
  • Lessons

The Unix Shell

  • Files and directories: pwd, cd, ls, mkdir, ...
  • History and tab completion
  • Pipes and redirection
  • Looping over files
  • Creating and running shell scripts
  • Finding things: grep, find, ...

Lessons

Introduction and data manipulation with R

  • Introduction to R
  • Reading and writing .csv
  • Creating Functions
  • Looping over files
  • Analyzing Multiple Data Sets
  • Making Choices - conditionals

Introduction to working with data in SQL

  • Relational databases.
  • Working with SQLite
  • Basic queries
  • Filtering
  • Building more complex queries

Lessons

Setup

To participate in a Data Carpentry workshop, you will need working copies of the software described below. Please make sure to install everything (or at least to download the installers) before the start of your workshop.

Overview

Editor

When you're writing scripts or text, it's nice to have a text editor that is optimized for writing code, with features like automatic color-coding of key words. The default text editor on Mac OS X and Linux is usually set to Vim, which is not famous for being intuitive. if you accidentally find yourself stuck in it, try typing the escape key, followed by ':wq!' (colon, lower-case 'q', exclamation mark), then hitting Return to return to the shell. (This will exit Vim and save the changes you made in the file.)

The Bash Shell

Bash is a commonly-used shell. Using a shell gives you more power to do more tasks more quickly with your computer.

R

R is a programming language that specializes in statistical computing. It is a powerful tool for exploratory data analysis. To interact with R, we will use RStudio, an interactive development environment (IDE).

SQL

SQL is a specialized programming language used with databases. We use a simple database manager called SQLite, either directly or through a browser plugin.

Spreadsheet

We'll be using a spreadsheet program. If you already have a spreadsheet program installed, like LibreOffice, Excel or OpenOffice, you can use whatever you already have. If you don't have a spreadsheet program, please download and install LibreOffice.

Windows

Editor

Notepad++ is a popular free code editor for Windows. Be aware that you must add its installation directory to your system path in order to launch it from the command line (or have other tools like Git launch it for you). The instructions to modify your path are available online here. Please ask your instructor to help you do this.

Git Bash

Install Git (version control) and a Bash shell for Windows from the msysGit project's homepage. This will provide you with Bash in the Git Bash program.

R

Install R by downloading and running this .exe file from CRAN. Also, please install the RStudio IDE.

SQLite

Install the Firefox SQLite browser plugin described below.

Software Carpentry Installer

Other tools used in Data Carpentry have been packaged up by Software Carpentry in an installer. This installer requires an active internet connection.

  • Download the installer.
  • Double click on the file to run it.
  • A command window will open and then close again. The installer downloads and installs a couple of command line programs that we'll need for course.
  • If you saw it open and then close again, you're set!

Mac OS X

Bash

The default shell in all versions of Mac OS X is bash, so no need to install anything. You access bash from the Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities). You may want to keep Terminal in your dock for this workshop.

Editor

We recommend Text Wrangler or Sublime Text. Alternatively, you can use nano, which should be pre-installed.

R

Install R by downloading and running this .pkg file from CRAN. Also, please install the RStudio IDE.

SQLite

sqlite3 comes pre-installed on Mac OS X. Also install the Firefox SQLite browser plugin described below.

Linux

Bash

The default shell is usually bash, but if your machine is set up differently you can run it by opening a terminal and typing bash. There is no need to install anything.

Editor

Kate is one option for Linux users. Alternatively, you can use nano, which should be pre-installed.

R

You can download the binary files for your distribution from CRAN. Or you can use your package manager, e.g. for Debian/Ubuntu run apt-get install r-base. Also, please install the RStudio IDE.

SQLite

sqlite3 comes pre-installed on Linux. Also install the Firefox SQLite browser plugin described below.

 

Extras - everyone needs to install these

Firefox SQLite Plugin

Instead of using sqlite3 from the command line, you will use this plugin for Firefox instead. If you don't already have firefox, install it first. To install the sqlite plugin:

  • Start Firefox.
  • Go to the plugin homepage.
  • Click the "Add Now" button.
  • Click "Install Now" on the dialog that appears after the download completes.
  • Restart Firefox when prompted.
  • To check that it was installed correctly, select "SQLite Manager" from the "Tools" menu.