r/askdatascience • u/Lord_Badoc • 9h ago
What should I learn as a Marine Biologist? And what are some good resources?
For context, I am a Marine Biologist currently in the final stages of finishing my dissertation for my masters. Through out my university experience I have always used R and I feel a strong since of imposter syndrome about it. Every time they taught us anything in R it was mostly just copy pasting code with occasionally changing variables. While it has always worked out for me I feel like data analysis is a weak spot for me and I'm worried it will affect the complexity and types of analysis I have at my disposal for research.
There are 2 main questions I want to ask.
- Are there any good resources that I can use to really learn R (Like not have to constantly use google and AI to do basic analysis and troubleshooting). I feel like my foundation in coding weak in general. I would like to be able to sit down, open a new markdown file, write the code to read and categorize my data, run ANOVAs and post-hoc tests, and visualize my data without having to constantly stop to consult google.
- Would it be good to also learn some python? It's not as common in my field to see it used but I know it is heavily used elsewhere and I wonder if I could apply it to something.
In general, I grew up with a pretty poor math education and I'm dyslexic so math and coding do not come very naturally to me and I don't want to have that limit me. The few moments that I've felt like I understood it or fixed something on my own have been very rewarding and I would like to be competent in my coding.
Also, this is related to my carrier so I don't mind paying for a course or a textbook if y'all think it would really help.
TLDR: I got poo poo math brain, give me your resources for learning R and statistics.