The National Statistics Office is enhancing its data analysis and statistical modelling skills with the recent completion of a four-day training on R and RStudio.
Facilitated by CAPSA Project Statistics Resident Advisor Dr Cengiz Ozkan, thirteen statisticians from the different units within the NSO took part in the training.
It presented an opportunity for the statisticians to sharpen their expertise in statistical programming and improve their collective ability to manage and analyse complex datasets using RStudio.
Director of Methodology and Data Processing Josephat Tako was a participant who is keen to master the RStudio software.
“The RStudio software is new to most of the NSO officers. Very few are familiar with the software, but on the basics. This training is more detailed.
“NSO has been using the Census and Survey Processing System, CSPro for a while now but we are now advancing in technology and we want to switch to using R instead.
“We are lucky to have Dr. Ozkan with us and we will continue to utilise his expertise on the software.”’
R is both a programming language and an environment, focused mainly on statistical analysis and graphics.
It is quickly becoming the standard for statistical analysis, it is free, and there is a large community of people using it which means there are free resources available online to continue your learning after we finish this course.
RStudio is a graphical user interface for R, it sits “on top” of base R and makes it more user-friendly and easier to learn R.
It can write, edit and store code used for data cleaning and analysis, generate, view and store graphs, and manage files.
In two weeks’ time the NSO will convene another training on the application of the software.
It will later start using the R and RStudio for the International Visitor Arrivals data and the National Consumer Price Index data.
This will involve importing commonly used data sources at the NSO into RStudio, including data from CSPro, Excel, and Survey Solutions.
The series of trainings are part of the Capacity Building in Statistics and Audit (CAPSA) Project between NSO and OAG in partnership with the World Bank.
ENDS.///