Statistics Sweden and Center for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) – Oxford University, collaborated in building the capacity of KNBS officers on R – a software for statistical computing and graphics. The three-day training which was conducted in the KNBS Data Training Center, focused on introduction to R was designed to build confidence in R programming, learning about data types, importing data and working with data frames.

Peter Nilsson, of Statistics Sweden believes “R is the future because it has a lot of potential and is open source.”

In line with the KNBS curriculum on R, this introductory training phase exposed participants to data visualization, Geographic Information System (GIS) in R, introduction to RAP, Rmarkdown and clean code, and, R control flow loops.

Data visualization is the art of displaying data in a clear and understandable way that allows for maximum impact. This helps users of KNBS data to view dashboards which contain summaries of data, for example, the FinAccess dashboard accessible from the KNBS website www.knbs.or.ke

Introduction to GIS in R introduces the fundamentals of working with geospatial data in R. Participants gained skills on loading spatial data and creating both static and interactive maps which meet users’ needs. James Thuo, a Cartographer at KNBS explains R in GIS “makes it easier to check errors, cut cost of printing questionnaires, and makes data collection easier.”

RMarkdown will allow users to set up new documents, create various types of content and output to different formats including HTML, PDF and Word, text formatting, Tables and Images.