A Quick Course in R

This is a quick introduction to get you started using R without assuming a lot of programing experience.

Download the PDF slides and also the text file quick-course-in-R.R or quick-course-in-R-win.txt so you can easily copy and paste the R commands in the tutorial. Save the file example.txt that you need for the Importing Data section.

To practice some of the skills covered in this tutorial, please consider a short R Lab. You will need the data file R_lab.csv.

Please email me at yorgovd@pfw.edu with comments and suggestion for improvements or typos. Cheers!

RStudio and R can be automatically installed via Purdue Fort Wayne software deployment system on classroom and lab computers.
- Double click at the Purdue FW Software Center icon at your Desktop and search for RStudio. Both R and RStudio will install automatically. To start, click on the windows logo and type RStudio.

Installation on a personal computer:

- Download from https://cloud.r-project.org/ (or just google "download R").
- Save the executable file and remember the location.
- Double click the file and follow the instructions.
- Once the installation is complete, double click the icon on your Desktop to start an R session.
- Test R by computing 2+2 (or something else :).
- To quit R, type q().
- Next, download ther free version of RStudio from here.

USEFUL LINKS Use Chrome or Firefox browser for the links to work well on Purdue Fort Wayne computers.

- To quickly run something in R (without actually installing R) you can use an online emulator in a web browser, e.g.:
https://www.mycompiler.io/new/r

- Quick-R for a quick external reference with many recipes: https://www.statmethods.net/about/sitemap.html

- A rather thorough Short Reference Card: https://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Baggott-refcard-v2.pd

- Free official R notes from R-Project.org: R for Beginners, by E. Paradis https://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Paradis-rdebuts_en.pdf

- Notes on R: A Programming Environment for Data Analysis and Graphics , by W. N. Venables, D. M. Smith and the R Core Team
https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-intro.pdf

- Many free (and paid) tutorials, courses, and videos are available online (including on YouTube); for instance:
https://www.datacamp.com/courses/free-introduction-to-r
http://cyclismo.org/tutorial/R/

Good, affordable books:

• The Art of R Programming, by Norman Matloff (Very good reviews)
• Linear Models with R, Second Edition, by Julian J. Faraway (a lot of R code)
• Introductory Statistics with R, by by Peter Dalgaard
• R Cookbook , by Paul Teetor

Back