Thanks for filling in the survey on your experience levels and interests in an introductory workshop on Bayesian statistics in R. I'll do my best to tailor the content based on your responses.
I'm going to assume you know the basics of ggplot and dplyr — the content will make a lot more sense if you understand the elements of a ggplot plot and the main dplyr verbs: mutate, filter, summarise, select, and group_by. If you need to brush up on these, I'd recommend these chapters from 'R for Data Science': http://r4ds.had.co.nz/data-visualisation.html http://r4ds.had.co.nz/transform.html
We can talk about textbooks at the workshop, but my favorite textbook on Bayesian modelling is 'Bayesian Models: A Statistical Primer for Ecologists' by Hobbs and Hooten. https://www.amazon.com/Bayesian-Models-Statistical-Primer-Ecologists/dp/0691159289
There is almost no code in this textbook, but I'd highly recommend it if you want to use Bayesian models in your own work or you just want to feel really solid with the fundamentals. It's surprisingly accessible and I've never found anything else that fills in all the gaps in understanding that most of us who didn't start from a statistics background have.
Because of our limited time, it is critical that you arrive with all of the necessary software and R packages installed. If you are having any issues with this, please get in touch with me (sean@seananderson.ca) before the workshop.
First, I would suggest having the latest version of R, version 3.5.0. However, version 3.4 or above should be fine. Check with:
sessionInfo()You can get the latest version at: https://cran.r-project.org/
You should have the latest version of RStudio (1.1.447 or greater). You can check with RStudio -> About RStudio on a Mac or Help -> About RStudio on Windows.
You can get the latest version at: https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/
Finally, install the necessary packages by running the following code in R:
install.packages(c("tidyverse", "rstan", "rstanarm", "brms", "rmarkdown",
"manipulate", "shiny", "remotes", "usethis"),
dependencies = TRUE)
remotes::install_github("seananderson/ggsidekick")Thanks and see you soon!
Sean