BIOSM 2350

R by the Sea: Data Analysis in the Marine Sciences

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

This course introduces students to basic data analysis and programming tools commonly used throughout the life sciences. Students will develop skills in R programming, including data wrangling and cleaning, the principles of open and reproducible science, building maps, and simple linear regression. In the first half of the course (on-line), students will learn R fundamentals and then, in the second half, relocate to Shoals Marine Lab (Gulf of Maine; in-person) to apply their coding skills to long-term data sets (intertidal counts, video fisheries observations, marine mammal censuses), as well as to biological data that they collect in the field around Appledore Island.

Last 4 Terms Offered 2023SU

Learning Outcomes

• Students will be able to implement best practices for data management.
• Students will be able to compare and contrast different tools for data management (Excel, SQL, etc.)
• Students will be able to use R statistical software for basic data cleaning and statistics.
• Students will be able to use R markdown to build reproducible workflows and documents.
• Students will be able to adhere to data ethics, especially related to data related to vertebrates.
• Students will be able to load, clean, and plot simple spatial data in R.

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