With so much emphasis on getting insight from data these days, it's no wonder that R is rapidly rising in popularity. R was designed from day one to handle statistics and data visualization, it's highly extensible with many new packages aimed at solving real-world problems and it's open source (read "free").
If you're ready to learn, we have just the ticket: A free PDF of Computerworld's "Beginner's guide to R."
Included in this 45-page guide:
- Introduction: First steps, including downloading R and RStudio, setting your working directory and installing and using packages.
- Get your data into R: Importing local and remote files, copying data from your clipboard, saving after import.
- Easy ways to do basic data analysis: Examining a data object, seeing basic stats with one line of code, slicing/subsetting your data.
- Painless data visualization: Base R graphics, ggplot2, adding color, exporting graphics.
- Syntax quirks: A few ways in which R is most unlike other programming languages -- learn these and you'll be ready to tackle R's idiosyncrasies. Plus: How to use SQL syntax within R.
- Additional resources: More than 60 recommended websites, videos, blogs, social media/communities, software and books to help you on your R journey.
Sure, it will take more than any single guide to make you an R master. But if you read all the explanations and follow the code, you should be well on your way to using R to get more out of your data.
If you are not already part of the Computerworld Insider program, register for free and then download the guide.
Happy learning!