The StatLab’s mission is to provide statistical and methodological support for Brown students. Peer instructors can assist students with quantitative course and research projects pertaining to basic statistics, epidemiological methods, statistical software, identifying data sources, and data analysis. Available services are contingent upon staff expertise.
Tutors and Virtual Hours
This Box link provides updated information for tutor hours and related Zoom Meeting links.
Schedule an appointment
To set up an appointment with the StatLab, please click here.
StatBytes Workshops
Byte 13: Introduction to Functions and For Loops in R April 2, 2024
About the talk: Learn how to write Functions and For Loops in R to complete repetitive tasks, streamline your code, and make your work more reproducible.
Files to follow along: Download files from Box
Speaker: Kim Johnson
Byte 12: Data Management and Exploration in SPSS (with Semere Bekena) February 27, 2024
About the talk: Learn about managing and exploring your data in SPSS.
Files to follow along: Download files from Box
Speaker: Semere Bekena
Byte 11: Get Started with GitHub for Collaboration (with Will Hutson) February 16, 2024
About the talk: Learn about GitHub, a free repository that facilitates version control and allows collaboration by multiple people on statistical code and other file types.
Files to follow along: Download files from Box
Speaker: Will Hutson
Byte 10: Data Management and Exploration in R (with Ellen Mukwekwerere) January 24, 2024
About the talk: Learn how to perform typical data management and exploration tasks in R.
You can join in to just watch and learn about this resource, or, if you want to follow along in R, you will need to have installed R and R Studio Desktop on your computer.
Files to follow along: Download files from Box
Speaker: Ellen Mukwekwerere
Byte 9: Making Accessible Plots in Excel and R (December 7, 2023)
About the talk: Learn how to work with color and texture in Excel and R to make your data visualizations more accessible to everyone including those with color vision deficiency.
You can join in to just watch and learn about this resource, or, if you want to follow along in R and Excel, you will need to have installed R and R Studio Desktop and have access to Excel on your computer.
This podcast episode has a lot of great information on color vision deficiency if you are interested in more background.
Files to follow along: Download files from Box
Speaker: Jenine Harris
Byte 8: How to Use ChatGPT to Help You Write R Code (November 2, 2023)
About the talk: Provides a brief introduction to using ChatGPT to write R code.
To prepare for this tutorial: Open a free account on ChatGPT 3.5 and install R and RStudio. R can be downloaded from https://cran.r-project.org/. Once R has been installed, then install the RStudio IDE, available at https://posit.co/downloads/. An IDE is an interactive development environment, which in this case makes R much easier to use.
Speaker: Olivia Weng
Byte 7: Basics of R Markdown (April 26, 2023)
About the talk: Provides a brief introduction to R Markdown for literate programming.
To prepare for this tutorial: R can be downloaded from https://cran.r-project.org/. Once R has been installed, then install the RStudio IDE, available at https://posit.co/downloads/. An IDE is an interactive development environment, which in this case makes R much easier to use.
Files to follow along: Download files from Box
Speaker: Hunter McGuire
Byte 6: Introduction to R (April 14, 2023)
About the talk: Provides a brief introduction to R for statistical analysis.
To prepare for this tutorial: R can be downloaded from https://cran.r-project.org/. Once R has been installed, then install the RStudio IDE, available at https://posit.co/downloads/. An IDE is an interactive development environment, which in this case makes R much easier to use.
Files to follow along: download files from Box.
Speaker: Kim Johnson
Byte 5: Creating Publication or Homework Ready Tables Using Stata’s Reimagined Table Command with Merriah Croston (February 28, 2023)
About the talk: Learn how to make well-formatted tables using code in Stata. The workshop includes code for descriptive and inferential statistics tables.
Files to follow along:
Speaker: Merriah Croston
Byte 4: Data Cleaning in Stata
About the talk: Learn how to clean your data using Stata. The workshop includes explanation and code for dealing with missing values, recoding variables, and reviewing summary data.
Files to follow along:
Speaker: Clifford Atuiri
Byte 3: Survival Analysis in R
About the talk: Learn how to model differences in time to an event between subjects with different characteristics using longitudinal data in R. This Statbyte will give a brief practical hands-on introduction to Cox proportional hazards regression and Kaplan-Meier curves.
Files to follow along:
Speaker: Andrea Heredia
Byte 2: Data Visualization Using ggplot2 in R
About the talk: The ggplot2 package in R provides a flexible way to create almost any type of graph you need. This workshop walks you through the code for some of the more commonly used graph types and demonstrates how ggplot2 makes the basic building blocks consistent across graph types so that you can re-use the same code process regardless of your graph needs.
Files to follow along:
Speaker: Sydney Vie
StatBytes: Creating Accessible Figures using Color and Alt-text in Excel and R
About the talk: Creating Accessible Figures using Color and Alt-text in Excel and R (Workshop slides can be found here)
Graphs are a great way to convey information but can be inaccessible to many people who are colorblind or who have other visual challenges. This presentation provides 6 tips for making figures more accessible through text, alt-text, and use of color and patterns. The examples are in Excel and R but the tips can be used with any software.
Other materials are here in case you want to follow along with the examples in Excel and R.
Speaker: Jenine Harris
Teach Me How to Google (Spring 2022)
About the talk: Teach Me How to Google (slides available on GitHub)
Googling for code help is something that all data scientists (at all career stages) do. But figuring out how to get the information you need back can be incredibly challenging, particularly for new coders. In this talk, we’ll discuss strategies for refining your queries to increase your chances of finding informative solutions.
Analysis of Public Health Data with a Complex Sample Survey Design (Spring 2022)
About the talk: Analysis of Public Health Data with a Complex Sample Survey Design (slides available on GitHub)
Data from large, national surveys (e.g., the National Survey on Drug Use and Health) often use a complex sampling design (e.g., multistage cluster and/or stratified sampling) and thus violate standard statistical assumptions (e.g., simple random sample). Thus, special procedures are needed to analyze this data due to unequal probabilities of response and selection inherent in the sampling design. This session will provide a brief overview of complex sample designs commonly seen in public health research applications. Best practices for analysis and sample code will be provided in SAS, Stata, and R.
Key Contacts
Kim Johnson
Professor
- Phone: 314-935-9154
- Email: kijohnson@nospam.wustl.edu
Office: Goldfarb Hall 237
Jenine Harris
Professor
- Phone: 314-935-3522
- Email: harrisj@nospam.wustl.edu
Office: Goldfarb Hall 357