1 Preamble

I am currently writing my PhD thesis on the impact of pneumococcal vaccination in Iceland. I am writing the thesis in Rstudio using the bookdown package and hosting the thesis on Github. Writing the thesis in Rstudio confers many advantages. Tables and Figures can be created directly within Rstudio, which minimizes additional work associated with manually moving them into a separate writing program – a process both error-prone and labor intensive. All aspects of the writing, typesetting and data analysis are documented and version controlled. The bookdown packages automates the process of exporting the thesis to word, pdf and html formats. The thesis will be open access during the writing process. I believe I will be more motivated if my productiveness – or lack thereof, is held accountable to anyone who wishes to check. I would be grateful for any and all comments on any aspect of the thesis under construction.