Machine learning often evokes images of Skynet, self-driving cars, and computerized homes. However, these ideas are less science fiction as they are tangible phenomena that are predicated on description, classification, prediction, and pattern recognition in data. To social scientists, such methods might be critical for investigating evolutionary relationships, global health patterns, voter turnout in local elections, or individual psychological diagnoses.

Part 2: Working With Projections & Spatial Queries

Raster data are used to represent geographic phenomena that are present and can be measured anywhere in a study area, like elevation, temperature, rainfall, land cover, soil type, etc. These data are a valuable resource for social scientists, planners, and engineers as well as natural scientists. This workshop will introduce basic raster concepts and methods for working with raster data in R. Participants will learn how to import and store raster data as spatial objects. We will explore methods for plotting rasters and manipulating raster data values.

Geospatial data are an important component of social science and humanities data visualization and analysis. The R programming language is a great platform for exploring these data and integrating them into your research. 

Geospatial Data in R, part I: Getting started with spatial data objects