Learn R! — Resources

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The letter R

 

Whether you’re a budding data scientist, a student of programming, or a researcher delving into analytics, R is a language which — while unusual compared to the standard regimen of programming languages — has its own unique flair and a unique capacity for powerful data processing made easy.

 

R can be a lot of fun to learn and to play with, and it’s dead useful, too. Fortunately, there are a lot of great resources out there for learning it.

 

 

Online Courses

Try R at Code School — a nice, interactive intro.

 

R Programming at Coursera — this course is offered as part of the data science specialization, but you can take it all on it’s own at get a lot out of it. It’s not amazingly in-depth, but for getting used to R, it’s a winner.

 

An alternative interactive course is also hosted by Datacamp.

 

Books

For a plethora of examples, insights, as well as guidance, check out the R Cookbook.

 

For a more thorough overview, R for Everyone is a nice resource.

 

To sink your teeth into something more involved, try Advanced R.

Code!

As with almost anything, the best way to learn is to practice (once you know some basics). Here’s a great list of example code, organized by category, that you can draw upon for practice.

 

You can get even more examples with these useful code snippet and introductory code samples in R for those who are already familiar with other languages.

 

And if you like long, jargon-filled documents (or like to pretend you do), have a gander at the official FAQ.

 

 

So go learn something, play around with code, and discover awesome insights!