Book An Introduction to R

In An Introduction to R the chapters are laid out in what I thought was a sensible order, however it is nearly impossible to take a straight path and some ducking and diving was necessary at times. I hope you find the layout reasonably logical. Each chapter in An Introduction to R has a brief introduction giving an idea of what’s to follow. Each chapter ends with a concise summary and some simple exercises (answers in the Appendix). I have tried to include plenty of examples and all the data is from within R itself, so there is no need to download anything else.

However, head to the Tips & Tricks page and look for the “Introduction-to-R” category for additional material that didn’t quite make the book.

Notes and Tips: At various points you’ll see Note and Tip sections, giving some explicit information that I felt was important at the time.

Key features.

• Useful for beginners and also as a reference for more seasoned veterans.
• Plenty of examples throughout, as well as additional notes and tips.
• Chapter summaries in concise table format help the book to be used as an ongoing reference work.

In this book An Introduction to R you will learn how to use the R programming language. You’ll learn how to get started with R, in particular:

• Making and Importing Data items.
• Exporting Data.
• Managing and Manipulating Data objects.
• Summarizing and Aggregating Data.
• Visualizing Data.
• The basics of Data Analysis, including:
  • Differences tests.
  • Correlation.
  • Association.
  • Regression.
• R Programming Functions.

The book An Introduction to R is intended as a foundation course in using R for Data Science and a springboard for further exploration into Data Analysis and Data Visualization. Not every R command is shown (there are so many!), and the emphasis is on those that the author deemed most useful. I apologize in advance if you are already an R user, and your favourite function is missing.

Some R functions have lots of potential arguments, and not all of these have been illustrated directly, in order to make the learning journey simpler. Only the most “helpful” arguments are shown but you will see clearly if there are additional parameters you might use (you’ll see how you can get additional information about these as you read the book).

• An Introduction to R will be published by Pelagic Publishing. See all my books at Pelagic Publishing.
• Be notified when this book is published: Pelagic Notification page
• For more articles visit the Tips and Tricks page and look for the various categories or use the search box.
• See also the Knowledge Base where there are other topics related to R and data science.
• Look at our other books on the Publications Page.
• Visit our other site at GardenersOwn for a more ecological matters.