This 2-part workshop series for intermediate R programmers focuses on how to load and prepare data for analysis. First, you'll learn how to screen a data set for potential problems in its structure and data types, as well as how to correct these. Data sets loaded from text files or scraped from the web often have features in text format that need additional processing before they can be used, so the series will include a deep dive into R's "stringr” package for text processing. Dates and times are another kind of data that can be difficult to handle, so the series will explore the basics of using the "lubridate" package for processing temporal data. You'll also learn how to use loops to automate repetitive tasks such as loading and combining similar data sets from many different files.

Prerequisites: These workshops are not an introduction to R. Participants are expected to have prior experience using R, be comfortable with basic R syntax, and to have it pre-installed and running on their laptops. This series is appropriate for motivated intermediate to advanced users who want a better understanding of base R. While not required, we recommend learners also attend the prior 2-part "Intermediate R: Thinking in R" workshop series.

Software: Latest version of the R programming language.