Getting Started With R
Hopefully I have convinced you to start your R adventure. Great! Now, I want to help you get started and improve, regardless of level of expertise.
Getting Access to R
R can be accessed either by downloading it here or by using an RStudio server. I started and recommend first using an RStudio server because it does not require any installation of software. You can just connect and start right away!
RStudio Server Options
There are a couple of options of RStudio servers. If you are a student at Pomona College (like me!), you can access the school’s server at http://rstudio.pomona.edu/. Another alternative is RStudio Cloud. RStudio created it to provide cloud computing to those unable to or uninterested in setting up their own server. As of June 2021, the system is free for up to 15 hours per month.
Taking your First Steps in R
If you are anything like me, you were scared by anything remotely similar to programming. Thankfully, R is not a programming language like C or Java. It was not created by software engineers for software development. Instead, it was developed by statisticians as an interactive environment for data analysis. Therefore, it is much easier and more intuitive. Moreover, the resources for getting started with R are wonderful.
If you are new to R, one of the best places to start is “R for Data Science” by Grolemund & Wickham, which can be accessed for free. This book provides numerous examples and problems you can try to solve to get some experience under your belt. Even if you have used R before, the text definetely has something new for you to learn. I look back at it often to find new things to try out.
Another spectacular resource is “Hands-On Programming with R” by Grolemund, which is also available for free. This book will teach you how to program in R, with hands-on examples. It was written for non-programmers so as to provide a friendly introduction to the R language. If you want to understand what you can do with R without all the technicalities, I strongly recommend you check this out.
There is also a more advanced version of the Grolemund & Wickham text, that you might want to try out if you are an advanced R user, called “Advanced R”. Its purpose is to improve your programming skills and understanding the underlying principles of why R works the way it does.
If reading is not really your learning style, RStudio has a wealth of amazing videos. You can also check out David Langer’s youtube channel for a bunch of useful tutorials.
And if you would rather something more structured, you can always take an online course. I have personally not tried one, but here are a handful of courses out there:
- https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhu-data-science
- https://www.edx.org/course/data-science-r-basics
- https://www.datacamp.com/courses/free-introduction-to-r
- https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-r
Finally, if you are not sure where you fall, you can head to https://education.rstudio.com/learn/ for a multitude of resources divided into three learning paths: Beginners, Intermediates, and Experts. They each include a series of actionanle steps to get you going in the right direction.
Becoming Involved in the R Community
A great way to stay involved in the R community is by following blogs. On their blogs, these content creators display projects they are working on, explain how to use packages, and some very cool outcomes that can be made using R. Here is a list of some of my favorites:
As always, if you have a question or a suggestion related to the topic covered in this article, please feel free to contact me!
