This course teaches advanced statistical programming in R, numerical computation and graphics -- the skills necessary to carry out statistical research and to create extension packages for the R statistical system. The skills developed in this course are particularly useful for those wishing to have a career involving data science, data analysis and statistical computing. The skills acquired in this course are highly applicable in data scientific practice.
The prerequisites are a basic knowledge of statistics and mathematics (Stage 2, basically). The first half comprises R Basic Concepts, Control Flow and Functions, Matrices, Numerical Computation and Statistical Data. The second half comprises Graphics, the S3 and S4 Systems, using Multiple Inheritance, Installing and Creating Packages, Efficiency Considerations and Scoping. The course is intended to be very practical and a large component of the material involves computer-related work.