Getting Started with R - Baby's first steps at modern computer aided statistical analysis - How to maintain excitement while learning online

So as many of you may know, I am always trying new things. Currently, I fancy myself 'back at school', trying to learn some new computer skills while I have the chance to be connected to stable and constant internet access. I will be changing up my posting style for awhile while I do this, posting some articles about this process. If these do not interest you, I will not be offended if you do not read them. I have not changed as a person, but those that have followed me for long enough know that I am 'un-nicheable' and that I post about different things in different seasons of life.

One thing that I learned a lot about in college is statistical analysis. I used SPSS to wrangle data for over a year as a research assistant at UW's Fiscal and Economic Research Center. Currently, the open source equivalent of a program like this is called 'R', and I want to document my progress here on steem while I start over with this new, open-source program.

_{R is free to download and managed open-source}

Earlier this year, I purchased a discounted year long membership to Datacamp. I will probably mention the site more throughout my process, and may even do a full review of it eventually. For now I can say that it is working fine for reviewing the basics.

So here I am, all alone in my room, learning how to add and subtract and take the simple mean() in a new program, and I get the desire to try it out on real data! I head over to Data.gov and looked for some cool open data about the USA, and ended up picking something that I thought was simple but powerful, demographic information by ZIP code!

_{SO MUCH DATA!!!!}

I've installed the program, I know how to add and subtract, I've downloaded a whole big data set....I am ready to go!

The only problem? I haven't yet learned how to import any data into R!

Here is the youtube video that I found to help me figure out how to open up a file in R:

Alright! Now I have everything I need to know, right?

I import my data, I list the variables, and I pick one that I might want to do something with! The only commands I have learned to far are mean and sum, so I decide to check what is the average percentage of US citizens across all ZIP codes, I mean, immigration is a HOT topic right now!

But wait.... It doesn't seem to be working.....

_{The variables have imported as strings, not numbers, I will need to clean this data before any 'statistics' can be done.}

Well, back to datacamp I go....

It was a small, but interesting field trip from my video courses, and I thought I would share it with you all today. I will continue to learn more, and hopefully provide updates as I spend more time in front of the computer POWERING UP my skills c;

Love and Light to All!

PS - our daily videos might be a little less daily for awhile, but I will still stream occasionally, work on my back log of posts and hope to have a few chores or chats a week for you all!