Practical 3

Quarto and tables

1. Create a new Quarto document in RStudio. Use the default format (HTML) and ensure that the document includes a title and author.

2. Write a short introduction (1-2 sentences) explaining the purpose of the document.

3. Add a Markdown section demonstrating headings, bold, italics, and lists. For example:

   • Bold text
   • Italic text
   • A numbered list
   • A bullet point list

4. Insert an R code chunk that calculates the mean and standard deviation of a numeric vector. Ensure the chunk is set to echo: true so the code appears in the rendered document.

   ```{r}
   #| echo: true
   values <- c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
   mean(values)
   sd(values)
   ```

5. Modify the code chunk options:

   • Add another code chunk that prints a message but set echo: false so the code is hidden but the output is visible.

   ```{r}
   #| echo: false
   print("This message is displayed, but the code is hidden.")
   ```

6. Create a simple table using the gt package. Load the penguins dataset and display a summary table of species and bill_len.

   ```{r}
   #| message: false
   library(tidyverse)
   library(gt)
   data(penguins)
   
   penguins |>
     select(species, bill_len) |>
     head() |>
     gt()
   ```

   Tip

   Note that gt is simply converting your data frame into a HTML table; it’s not calculating anything like tbl_summary.

7. Use the tbl_summary function from the gtsummary package to summarise all numeric variables in the penguins dataset by species.

   ```{r}
   library(gtsummary)
   
   penguins |>
     select(species, where(is.numeric)) |>
     tbl_summary(by = species)
   ```

8. Convert the document to Microsoft Word format by modifying the YAML header at the top of the document. Change format: html to format: docx.

9. Render the document and verify that the output appears as expected.