R How to start and where to look

R how to start and where to look:

R is a programming language for statistical computing. Read the wiki entry for detailed information about the history of origin and the possibilies you have with it.

Power of R is given by user-created packages. Some of them are here explained. These enable you, among other things, to calculate all possible statistical methods. Present results in graphs. Build interactive applications that can be used online or locally, or even create websites.

First you need to install R. It runs on UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS. Here you will find the official site were you can choose the appropriate download file for your system. There are also references to documentation and useful links.

After installation you can use R on your command prompt but at the beginning I recommend to use RStudio. It is possible to purchase different licenses, but the free version is sufficient to start with. RStudio is an IDE (integrated development environment) and available as a desktop and a server application. With RStudio you can manage files, install packages and a Help tab gives you information to all commands and packages which are listed in the R documentation. You can plot graphs and see them in the viewer directly. It is also possible to manage projects in github.

There are some books that make R available for different use cases. If you plan to use r to analyze data in a scientific context, I recommend this book.