Markdown is a practical tool

Introduction

Markdown is a simplified way of writing HTML-code. I have not engaged myself especially much in markdown. Yes, I have heard about, especially in relation to RStuido. However, I don’t use RStudio, except when I am teaching. And to be honest, it is here I find most use of Markdown. For example, in a couple of weeks I will be teaching on a module to a course on Criminology. The module I will be teaching on is about statistical methods. In the module we use R statistics. Good to know is that the students are not experienced with methods, and using R and writing codes can be overwellming. I have had this module two times now, so I know by fact that it works. But for some students it is of course hard and frustrating to write code — especially if not done that before. Which is the case for most of the students.

So one Saturday I sat down and started to learn Markdown. As I have said in previous posts I use Emacs. But in this case I actually started by using RStudio, since evertyhing is already set up. In Emacs additional packages must be installed.

One of the best features of Markdown is the possibility to use code boxes (of course also available in HTML). For example like this:

install.packages("haven")
library(haven)
wd <- read_sav("data_file.sav")

Another very good feature (works very well when using RStudio) is the possbility to run the r code and get the output presented in the document. Markdown is also available in WordPress. Here I have used wp-markdown.