Lab 0: Welcome to Lab

Orientation & Lab Expectations

Dave Brocker

Farmingdale State College

Welcome to Lab!

Lab meets once a week, right after Monday lecture. Think of it as the “hands-on” half of the course — lecture is where you learn the why, lab is where you practice the how.

  • Every lab pairs with recent lecture content

  • You’ll work in R, using real (or realistic) data

  • Most labs end with a few questions to submit

How Lab Works

Every Week, Roughly

  1. A short concept recap (2–3 minutes)

  2. A scenario and dataset to explore together

  3. Guided R code — you’ll run it, tweak it, and predict what changes before you see the output

  4. A handful of short-answer questions, submitted on Brightspace before the following lab

Submitting Your Work

  • Answers go on Brightspace, under that week’s Lab assignment

  • Short answers are fine — I’m looking for reasoning, not essay length

  • Late work: see the syllabus for the policy; if something comes up, email me before the deadline

Setting Up Posit Cloud

We’ll be using Posit Cloud (formerly RStudio Cloud) all semester — a browser-based version of RStudio, so there’s nothing to install.

  1. Go to posit.cloud and create a free account (use your FSC email)

  2. Join our class workspace using the link posted on Brightspace

  3. Open the “Lab Template” project — this is where you’ll do your work each week

A Few R Basics

  • R is case-sensitive: Score and score are different variables

  • <- assigns a value to a name: x <- 5

  • |> (the pipe) means “then do this next” — it chains steps together

  • If you get an error, read it. It usually tells you exactly what R didn’t understand.

Icebreaker

Everyday Statistics

Turn to a neighbor:

  • What’s one number or statistic you’ve seen this week — in the news, on your phone, anywhere?

  • Do you trust it? Why or why not?

  • We’ll come back to “should I trust this number?” all semester.

Icebreaker

Your Relationship With Math

  • On a scale of 1 (dread) to 10 (bring it on), how do you feel about this class right now?

  • You are absolutely not alone if that number is low — statistics anxiety is extremely common, and it is not a measure of whether you’ll do well here.

Before Next Lab

  • Make sure your Posit Cloud account works and you can open the Lab Template project

  • Skim the syllabus, especially the lab and homework policies

  • Bring questions! There’s no such thing as a bad one in this class.