1 Starting with R
This chapter covers
- Getting a feel for what R is and what its ecosystem is like
- Installing the R language and RStudio Desktop application
- Acquainting ourselves with the RStudio and learning some keyboard shortcuts
- Introducing R Markdown as a way to run R code
- Understanding our learning path for this book
- Where to go for help
R is a great language for working with data. Have you ever used Excel for data analysis work and wished you could make better charts? Perhaps you came up against problems with working with larger amounts of data? The lessons in this book will help to address those common woes and much more. We’ll tidy and summarize tabular data. We’ll make beautiful charts. We’ll also work toward making those trickier topics (like working with dates and times, joining datasets together, and publishing and distributing our work) less cumbersome and much more understandable.
R has really come a long way in the past decade! The large and growing ecosystem of packages (i.e., collections of functions that help us work with data) and diverse user base has extended the language such that it’s not just about doing only statistics. R is, in fact, now very useful for solving a wide range of data problems. It’s great that you’re picking up this book and learning about what R can help you accomplish. As it turns out, there’s a good chance that your analytical problems can be solved with even just a little R knowledge.