This course introduces modern visual data exploration and communication methods to social scientists with limited prior experience. Students will learn to effectively present data to diverse audiences across multiple formats. The course utilizes the R programming language, RStudio development environment, and the tidyverse suite of R packages—with particular emphasis on ggplot2—for data processing and visualization.

Students will develop skills to confidently explore data descriptively, communicate findings to both academic and general audiences, and refine model results for presentations and publications. The course emphasizes both clarity and aesthetic considerations in data visualization, while incorporating best practices for practical, efficient, and reproducible workflows. Through a unified toolset, students will learn to display visualizations effectively across web platforms, academic papers, reports, and presentations.

Prerequisites include a basic understanding of fundamental data and statistical concepts, as well as basic familiarity with the R language. No prior experience with the tidyverse or ggplot2 is required. The course materials will consist of a series of R Markdown chapters that will serve as our textbook, which will be made available to all participants.

For software and hardware requirements, we will be using Posit Cloud, a cloud version of R. This approach eliminates installation and troubleshooting time, allowing us to focus more on learning.