Using RMarkdown

Estimated time: 12 minutes

Overview

Questions

• How do you write a lesson using R Markdown and sandpaper?

Objectives

• Explain how to use markdown with the new lesson template
• Demonstrate how to include pieces of code, figures, and nested challenge blocks

Introduction

---

This is a lesson created via The Carpentries Workbench. It is written in Pandoc-flavored Markdown for static files and R Markdown for dynamic files that can render code into output. Please refer to the Introduction to The Carpentries Workbench for full documentation.

What you need to know is that there are three sections required for a valid Carpentries lesson template:

1. questions are displayed at the beginning of the episode to prime the learner for the content.
2. objectives are the learning objectives for an episode displayed with the questions.
3. keypoints are displayed at the end of the episode to reinforce the objectives.

Instructor Note

Inline instructor notes can help inform instructors of timing challenges associated with the lessons. They appear in the “Instructor View”

Challenge 1: Can you do it?

What is the output of this command?

R

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

Output

OUTPUT

[1] "This new lesson looks good"

Challenge 2: how do you nest solutions within challenge blocks?

Show me the solution

You can add a line with at least three colons and a solution tag.

Figures

---

You can also include figures generated from R Markdown:

R

pie(
  c(Sky = 78, "Sunny side of pyramid" = 17, "Shady side of pyramid" = 5), 
  init.angle = 315, 
  col = c("deepskyblue", "yellow", "yellow3"), 
  border = FALSE
)

Sun arise each and every morning

Or you can use standard markdown for static figures with the following syntax:

![optional caption that appears below the figure](figure url){alt='alt text for accessibility purposes'}

You belong in The Carpentries!

Callout

Callout sections can highlight information.

They are sometimes used to emphasise particularly important points but are also used in some lessons to present “asides”: content that is not central to the narrative of the lesson, e.g. by providing the answer to a commonly-asked question.

Math

---

One of our episodes contains \(\LaTeX\) equations when describing how to create dynamic reports with {knitr}, so we now use mathjax to describe this:

$\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}$ becomes: \(\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}\)

Cool, right?

Key Points

• Use .md files for episodes when you want static content
• Use .Rmd files for episodes when you need to generate output
• Run sandpaper::check_lesson() to identify any issues with your lesson
• Run sandpaper::build_lesson() to preview your lesson locally