Using RMarkdown

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 2 min

Questions

• How to write a lesson using RMarkdown?

Objectives

• Explain how to use RMarkdown with the new lesson template.

• Demonstrate how to include pieces of code, figures, and challenges.

This episode demonstrates all the features that can be used when writing a lesson in RMarkdown.

To generate the site, you will need to have the following packages installed:

install.packages(c("knitr", "stringr", "checkpoint"))

If the lesson uses additional packages, the script that converts the Rmd files into markdown, will detect them and install them for you, when you run make serve or make site.

This first chunk is really important, and need to be included at the beginning of each episode written in RMarkdown.

source("../bin/chunk-options.R")

The rest of the lesson should be written as a normal RMarkdown file. You can include chunk for codes, just like you’d normally do.

Normal output:

1 + 1

[1] 2

Output with error message:

x[10]

Error in eval(expr, envir, enclos): object 'x' not found

Output generating figures:

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(diamonds, aes(x = carat,  y = price, color = cut)) +
    geom_point()

For the challenges and their solutions, you need to pay attention to where the > go and where to leave blank lines. You can include code chunks in both the instructions and solutions. For instance this:

> ## Challenge: Can you do it?
>
> What is the output of this command?
>
> 
> ~~~
> paste("This", "new", "template", "looks", "good")
> ~~~
> {: .language-r}
>
> > ## Solution
> >
> > 
> > ~~~
> > [1] "This new template looks good"
> > ~~~
> > {: .output}
> {: .solution}
{: .challenge}

will generate this:

Challenge: Can you do it?

What is the output of this command?

paste("This", "new", "template", "looks", "good")

Solution

[1] "This new template looks good"

Key Points

• Edit the .Rmd files not the .md files

• Run make serve to knit documents and preview lesson website locally