Stage 1 · Lesson 1 of 7
Notebooks and a clean environment
work in notebooks: documents where code, output, charts and notes sit together and run one cell at a time. and Google Colab are the Python choices; with Quarto is the R one. Alongside the notebook, set up a project environment, a folder with its own list of package versions, so the analysis runs the same on another computer.
In Python that is a with a requirements file; in R it is renv with its . Keep every project in its own Git repository from day one.
Common traprunning cells out of order for weeks until the notebook only works in your open session: restart and run everything from the top before you trust or share a result.
A question to check yourself, an AI practice session and 2 cheat sheet entries come with the full roadmap. Unlock
Resources for this stage
Start with
- BookFreeR for Data Science (2e)
Wickham, Çetinkaya-Rundel, Grolemund · Beginner
Free online: the Whole game and Transform chapters teach the tidyverse verbs in the order you need them