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29 Jun 18 | News

Recap of LISER workshop on "R and Statistical Learning"

Researchers and PhD students learned programming language for statistics and data science.

In the framework of the ‘internal training program’ supported by LISER, the Workshop on “R and Statistical Learning” was held at LISER on 14 -15 of June, 2018. The workshop was organised by Michela Bia, Andrea Mercatanti (LISER Researchers) and Anna Gottard (Professor of Statistics at the “Department of Statistics, Computer Science, Applications Giuseppe Parenti” of the University of Florence) . The workshop/lectures were entirely sponsored by the Institution.

R is one of the most used language for statistics and data science. It is freely available and has many utilities for basic and advanced statistical analysis.  The short course “Introduction to R and Statistical Learning” aimed at introducing the software R to PhD students and researchers with no previous experience who wanted to have an idea on how to use the R and Statistical Learning to conduct statistical analysis.

The first part of the course provided a general introduction to basic operations and functions for data structures, data manipulation and plotting, together with some basics on linear and generalised linear models. The second part of the course introduced instead predictive models for statistical learning, focusing on the lasso estimator, classification and regression trees and random forests.

PhD students and young researchers, coming from LISER, the University of Luxembourg, United Kingdom, and Germany found the workshop a unique opportunity to build capacity and network in an important field of both theoretical and applied relevance.

About LISER trainings

LISER takes skills training and professional development very seriously. A combination of different types of training modalities are offered to researchers and PhD students such as lectures on research methodology, tutorials on software and data, transferable-skills training and Summer, Winter Schools and Workshops.

Training modules are covered by external professors and experts in the Institute’s research fields, and by local research staff. Besides technical courses the Institute organises non-technical courses that enhance the development of key skills to advance in a research career such as time management, academic writing, presentation skills, conceptual frameworks, project writing, building networks, etc.

Furthermore, with the aim of increasing the academic environment and research exchange, the Institute organises weekly research seminars series where external and local researchers present their work, including PhD candidates.