STAT545 A/B: Exploratory Data Analysis (Fall 2025)
👋 Welcome!
Welcome to STAT 545 at the University of British Columbia! Whether you’re a student enrolled in STAT 545 or simply someone looking to learn how to write reproducible and collaborative data analyses, it is our hope that this website will serve as a great resource for learning these new skills!
In short, this course will enable you to confidently write clean and modern data analyses in R using version control software (GitHub), and creating reports using R Markdown. The primary focus will be on using these technologies to conduct analyses with daily workflow, rather than the statistical theory and methods for analysis.
This course is divided into two parts. In Part I (STAT545 A), we will introduce
- R and RStudio,
- Report generation with R Markdown,
- Project organization, workflow, and coding style,
- Data management with dataframes and tibbles using tidyverse,
- Data visualization with ggplot2, and
- Version control using Git and Github.
In Part II (STAT545 B), we will dive deeper into
- Writing functions in R,
- Advanced computations on data,
- Functional programming with purrr,
- R packages,
- Interactive pages, apps, and graphics with RShiny, and
- Website development using Quarto.
If you are a student enrolling in this course for credit at UBC, you MUST take STAT 545 A to enroll in STAT545 B. There are no exceptions to this rule.
👩🏫 Your Teaching Team (2025)
My name is Grace Tompkins (she/her) and I’ll be your course instructor. I’m a Biostatistician and recent PhD graduate passionate about teaching! I’m excited to be guiding you throughout this course.
I am joined by a wonderful group of TAs:
Asfar Lathif
Erick Navarro
Mario Gomez Camacho
Please reach out if you have any concerns or questions at grace<at>stat.ubc.ca, or through our Slack channel!
I am slowly adding content to a NEW YouTube channel for STAT 545! Feel free to check out the content there under the @ProfTompkins account.
📲 Course Communications
Our course communications will occur on a dedicated Slack Channel. If you’re enrolled in STAT545 at UBC, head to Canvas for the invite link. Please email the instructor if you have any issues registering.
Announcements, weekly summaries, and other important information will be in the #announcements channel. We’ll also have dedicated channels for the course topics, worksheets, and other assessments.
The STAT 545 team will be actively monitoring Slack during regular working hours (9am to 5pm PT, Monday to Friday). You are free to ask questions outside of this window but please keep in mind that there are no expectations for the team to answer questions outside of working hours or on weekends or holidays.
To make the most out of Slack, please
Use the
#generalchannel for clarifications, asking about course organization, or clarifying instructions. Things you post on the#generalchannel will be seen by everyone, so please do not provide information that gives away answers to assignments.Make a group chat with our TAs when you need more personalized help, or have an issue with grading. They may direct you to the
#generalchannel when appropriate, or direct you to the instructor.Direct message the instructor if there is a concern that is more personal (i.e., you need to self declare an absense) or if you have already talked to the TAs about an issue and are unsatisfied. You can also direct message the instructor if you are having issues with a group member in any group-related assignments.
Post in the
#randomchannel if you find things related to the course that you’d like to share
ℹ Course Information
All course information is in the Syllabus (STAT 545 A or STAT 545 B).
Not seeing what you’re looking for? Check out the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) or try searching a topic or keyword in the top right-hand corner of this website!
📝 Attributions
Many thanks to those who have contributed to the materials for STAT545 over the years. Content has been created by Albina Gibadullina, Vincenzo Coia, Jenny Bryan, Lucy Gao, Grace Tompkins, Katie Burak, Victor Yuan, and other members of the Instructional Team.