Preparatory Work

To get the most out of this course, it is important for students to brush up on basic statistics and learn the rudiments of R (an open-source statistical environment) prior to using materials prepared by the instructors. In the course, additional statistical topics will be covered on non-linear and non-normal data, unidimensional scaling, multidimensional scaling and dimension reduction, multilevel modeling and causal graphs, Bayesian approaches, phylogenetic inference and comparative phylogenetic methods, and social network analysis.

Before the course begins, we encourage students to start with this preparatory work, which consists of two main parts: becoming familiar with R programming language; and refreshing your practical knowledge of statistics.

Learning R

We will be using the R programming language to carry out quantitative tests. Before you begin, you should have the programs “R” and “R Studio” installed, as well as a basic knowledge of how to program in R.

You may not have used R before. To help you, we’ve designed a mini-course on programming in R that’s specifically designed for the HRAF Summer Institute curriculum:

https://correlation-machine.com/rforanthropologists/

This module is designed for people who have never programmed before, or who program, but have never used R before. It will take you through the very first steps of programming, and prepare you for more extensive introductory courses. By the end of this module, you should be able to load data, combine datasets, and produce graphs. If you’ve used a different programming language before, then you can probably complete this course in 5 hours. If you’re new to programming, you might need about 12 hours to complete.

If you have used R before, but want to check that you know the essentials, there’s a “Final Task” in the module. If you can do this task, then there’s no need to do the entire mini-course.

Statistics Refresher

In addition to R, we expect you to brush up on basic statistics. There are two tasks:

First, make sure to read chapter 8 and chapter 10 from the book Cross-Cultural Research Methods by Carol Ember and Melvin Ember (2009).

Secondly, the attached Stats Refresher covers some basic terminology that we’ll be using. Make sure that you’re familiar with these terms before you begin.