R is rapidly becoming the most important scripting language for both experimental- and computational biologists. It is well designed, efficient, widely adopted and has a very large base of contributors who add new functionality for all modern aspects of data analysis and visualization. Moreover it is free and open source. However, R's great power and expressivity can at first be difficult to approach without guidance, especially for those who are new to programming. This workshop introduces the essential ideas and tools of R.

Participants will gain practical experience and skills to be able to:

Meet the challenges of data handling;
Break down problems into structured parts;
Use R syntax, functions and packages;
Understand best practices for scientific computational work.