The R statistical programming language has become the de facto standard for the analysis of social science data. R is free, open-source, and available for the three main operating systems: Windows, MAC, and Linux. R’s flexibility makes routine data analysis easy and also supports innovative programming and graphics. The goal of this seminar is to introduce R and R programming using a combination of lecture-demonstration and hands-on exercises with real data. We encourage participants to bring laptops with the R program pre-installed. We will provide R scripts and a list of online resources.