Cytometry in R - Week # 09 - It's Raining Functions!

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Welcome back to the ninth week of the Cytometry in R course! In this week's session, It's Raining Functions! For previous course emails, see here .

Over the last couple months, we have gradually built out a foundation of basic R skills, and explored some of the flow cytometry analysis infrastructure that we will be using throughout the course. In the process, we have extensively used functions, i.e., the tools within a toolbox, to carry out various useful tasks. While it is great that the R community as a whole has developed a small horde of useful functions, sometimes we need something that is not yet available.

This week we will learn how to write our own functions, which will enable us to start exploring beyond the bounds of what others have already done. In the process, we will learn of a couple ways to iterate through vectors or lists, reducing the times we need to copy and paste the same of codes for slightly different inputs, and start to gain an appreciation of functional programming. You can find this week's course material here

Updated Times

For those in Baltimore attending in-person:

• This week we will meet on Tuesday at 4 PM EST (Bressler Research Building 7-035), before returning to the Thursday timeslot next week.

For those attending online, our YouTube live-streams will be on:

• Tuesday 2200 EST (Wednesday 0300 GMT+0). Please note, we are down to 1-2 regular participants and may need to revisit whether to maintain the time-slot for the next course section (Cytometry Core).

• Wednesday 1530 EST (Wednesday 2030 GMT+0). We will be moving this time-slot back 30 minutes for the rest of the course (with the arrival of spring I need to dash across town to be on the water by 5:15 pm). Attendance is still holding up and will continue through the next course section (Cytometry Core).

• Thursday 1000 EST (Thursday 1500 GMT+0). Attendance is still holding up and will continue through the next course section (Cytometry Core).

For those watching the recordings:

• Following up on community feedback survey comments, I have gone back and have left only the best recording of the weekly live-streams showing as public, and unlisted the other two to reduce confusion.

Best Wishes-
David