Introduction to R

Applied Statistical Methods (STG 09209)

Advanced Statistical Methods (AGS 606)

Leguma Bakari
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Phone:+255 762 760 095
February 20, 2024
Eastern Africa Statistical Training Center (EASTC)

1
Outline

1 Introduction
R and Rstudio Definitions
R and RStudio Installation
RStudio Interface
2 Why Use R?

3 Data Operators in R

4 R Comments
5 Data Types and Variables

6 Frequently Used Functions

2
Outline

1 Introduction
R and Rstudio Definitions
R and RStudio Installation
RStudio Interface
2 Why Use R?

3 Data Operators in R

4 R Comments
5 Data Types and Variables

6 Frequently Used Functions

3
R Software Definition

• R is a programming language and software environment for

statistical analysis, graphics representation and reporting, or
• R is a popular programming language used for statistical
computing and graphical presentation.
• R was created by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the
University of Auckland, New Zealand, and is currently developed
by the R Development Core Team.
• R is freely available under the GNU General Public License, and
pre-compiled binary versions are provided for various operating
systems like Linux, Windows and Mac.
• This programming language was named R, based on the first
letter of first name of the two R authors (Ross Ihaka and Robert
Gentleman).
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R Studio Definition

• RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for R.

• It includes a console, syntax-highlighting editor that supports
direct code execution, as well as tools for plotting, history,
debugging and workspace management.
• RStudio is available in open source and commercial editions and
runs on the desktop (Windows, Mac, and Linux) or in a browser
connected to RStudio Server or RStudio Server Pro
(Debian/Ubuntu, RedHat/CentOS, and SUSE Linux).
• RStudio is a free and open-source integrated development
environment (IDE) for R, a programming language for statistical
computing and graphics. JJ Allaire, creator of the programming
language ColdFusion, founded RStudio.
• Hadley Wickham is the Chief Scientist at RStudio.
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R and RStudio: What is the difference?

• First time users of R are often confused as to the difference

between R and RStudio.
• RStudio is actually an add-on to R: it takes the R software and
adds to it a very user-friendly graphical interface.
• Thus, when one uses RStudio, they are still using the full version
of R while also getting the benefit of greater functionality and
usability due to an improved user interface.
• As a result, when using R, one should always use RStudio;
working with R itself is very cumbersome.
• Since RStudio is an add-on to R, you must first download and
install R as well as RStudio, two steps which are done separately.
• On your computer, you will see R and RStudio as separate
installed programs.
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Outline

1 Introduction
R and Rstudio Definitions
R and RStudio Installation
RStudio Interface
2 Why Use R?

3 Data Operators in R

4 R Comments
5 Data Types and Variables

6 Frequently Used Functions

7
R and RStudio Installation

• As discussed above, you must download and install both R and

RStudio.
• To install R, click here and download the latest version of R for
Windows, Mac or Linux.
• When you have downloaded and installed R, you can run R on
your computer.
• To install Rstudio, click here for Windows, Mac, and Linux
(Ubuntu).
• Scroll due to Installers for Supported Platforms, open the chosen
platform’s link, run the installer after downloading, and follow
the instructions.

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Outline

1 Introduction
R and Rstudio Definitions
R and RStudio Installation
RStudio Interface
2 Why Use R?

3 Data Operators in R

4 R Comments
5 Data Types and Variables

6 Frequently Used Functions

9
The interface of RStudio

When you open R Studio for the first time, you should see the
following interface:

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Console

• The large window on the left side is the Console.

• You can think of this as the “calculator” for R Studio.
• This is were all of the input, calculations and output are
contained.
• In fact, if you were to run R and not R Studio, this Console is the
only window you would see;
• The > symbol indicates the current line in the Console, with the
pointer at this line indicated by a blinking vertical bar.
• In R, each command is considered a single line;
• you cannot have multiple commands on the same line unless you
separate the commands in the single line with a semicolon (;).
• Try typing 2+2;3+3 in the Console and view the output.

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R Scripts

• While the Console forms the workhorse of R, operating solely in

the Console is very cumbersome.
• Instead of typing your commands in the Console each time you
run R, we will instead create a script.
• A script is a list of R commands that is saved as a text file to then
be submitted into R line by line.
• Scripts are what makes R so useful as they allow easy
reproducibility.
• Scripts are saved as a .R extension which can be read by most
text editors (e.g., Notepad in Windows).
• To create a new script you can select File > New File > R Script
at the top of R Studio.
• You should see the Console window go to the bottom and a new,
empty window appear above the Console. 12
• This new window is where your scripts that are open will appear;
each script that you have loaded is marked by a tab at the top of
the window.
• Anytime you change a script, the text becomes red and an *
appears to indicate that it has been edited since it was last saved. 13
R Studio Shortcuts

1 ctrl + 1 (ctrl + shift + 1) for r script window

2 ctrl + 2 (ctrl + shift + 2) for console window
3 ctrl + 3 (ctrl + shift + 3) for help window
4 ctrl + 4 (ctrl + shift + 4) for history window
5 ctrl + 5 (ctrl + shift + 5) for files window
6 ctrl + 6 (ctrl + shift + 6) for plots window
7 ctrl + 7 (ctrl + shift + 7) for packages window
8 ctrl + 8 (ctrl + shift + 8) for environment window
9 ctrl + 9 (ctrl + shift + 9) for viewer window
10 ctrl + alt + R for history of executed syntaxes
11 ctrl + shif + N for new R script
12 ctrl + shift + P for file menu
13 ctrl + shift + R for for inserting section in active R script
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Outline

1 Introduction
R and Rstudio Definitions
R and RStudio Installation
RStudio Interface
2 Why Use R?

3 Data Operators in R

4 R Comments
5 Data Types and Variables

6 Frequently Used Functions

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Why Use R?

• It is a great resource for data analysis, data visualization, data

science and machine learning,
• It provides many statistical techniques (such as statistical tests,
classification, clustering and data reduction),
• It is easy to draw high quality graphs in R, like pie charts,
histograms, box plot, scatter plot, etc++
• It works on different platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux),
• It is open-source and free.
• It has a large community support, and
• It has many packages (libraries of functions) that can be used to
solve different problems.

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Important Tips for R Beginners

1 R is an open source platform

2 R is built on packages/libraries
3 There are multiple ways of doing the same thing in R
4 R Packages can change
5 R is case sensitive
6 R can import data from different platforms, from excel, SPSS,
Stata and many more.

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Outline

1 Introduction
R and Rstudio Definitions
R and RStudio Installation
RStudio Interface
2 Why Use R?

3 Data Operators in R

4 R Comments
5 Data Types and Variables

6 Frequently Used Functions

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Data Operators in R

There are five (5) different operators in R programming.

i Arithmetic Operators
ii Assignment Operators
iii Relational Operators
iv Logical Operators
v Special Operators

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Arithmetic Operators

Description Operator Example

Adding up two or more operands + 3+2=5
Subtracting two or more operands - 3-2=1
Multiplying two or more operands * 3*2=6
Dividing two or more operands / 3/2=1.5
Exponentiation of operand ˆ 3ˆ2=32 = 9
Exponentiation of operand ** 3**2=9
Reminder for the division %% 5%%2=1
Quotient(whole number) for the division %/% 5%/%2=2

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Assignment Operators

• The assignment operators are used to assign values,characters or

any other type to the object.
• The operator can either be left or right assignment operator.
• There are about five assignment operators.

Description Operator Example

= a=5
<− b< −5
Left Assignment
<< − d<< −5
−> 5− >e
Right Assignment − >> 5− >>f

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Relational (Conditional) Operators

Description Operator Example

TRUE if the left operand is grater than the > 2>3
right
TRUE if the right operand is less than the left < 2<3
TRUE if the right operand is equal to the left == 2 == 3
TRUE if the right operand is not equal to the != 2! = 3
left
TRUE if the left operand is grater than or equal >= 2 >= 3
to the right
TRUE if the right operand is less than or equal <= 2 <= 3
to the left

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Logical Operators

Three symbols are the famous one for logical operators for AND,OR
and NOT (negation)

Description Operator Example

AND & TRUE & TRUE==TRUE
OR | TRUE | FALSE==TRUE
NOR ! !FALSE==TRUE

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Special Operators

Description Operator Example

Creation of of number series in : x< −2 : 9
sequence
Identify if an element belong to %in% 5 %in% x
a vector
Multiplying a matrix A and ma- %*% M1 = A %*% B
trix B

The above example is like asking if 5 is among the element of vector x.

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Outline

1 Introduction
R and Rstudio Definitions
R and RStudio Installation
RStudio Interface
2 Why Use R?

3 Data Operators in R

4 R Comments
5 Data Types and Variables

6 Frequently Used Functions

25
R Comments

• Comments can be used to explain R code, and to make it more

readable.
• It can also be used to prevent execution when testing alternative
code.
• Comments starts with a #.
• When executing the R-code, R will ignore anything that starts
with #
• This example uses a comment before a line of code:
• Example;
• # This is a comment
• To comment multi-line, highlights the intended lines then use
shortcut Ctrl + Shift + C
• You can just as easily remove the comment by highlighting the
lines again and pressing the same shortcut Ctrl + Shift + C 26
Outline

1 Introduction
R and Rstudio Definitions
R and RStudio Installation
RStudio Interface
2 Why Use R?

3 Data Operators in R

4 R Comments
5 Data Types and Variables

6 Frequently Used Functions

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Data Types and Variables

• Generally, while doing programming in any programming

language, you need to use various variables to store various
information.
• In R variables are nothing but reserved memory locations to store
values.
• This means that, when you create a variable you reserve some
space in memory.
• The variables are assigned with R-Objects and the data type of
the R-object becomes the data type of the variable.
• There are many types of R-objects,

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• The frequently used ones are
i Vectors
ii Matrices
iii Arrays
iv Factors
v Lists
vi Data Frames
vii Date
• The simplest of these objects is the vector object and there are six
data types of these atomic vectors, also termed as six classes of
vectors.
• These atomic vectors includes Logical, Numeric, Integer,
Complex, Character, and Raw

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Outline

1 Introduction
R and Rstudio Definitions
R and RStudio Installation
RStudio Interface
2 Why Use R?

3 Data Operators in R

4 R Comments
5 Data Types and Variables

6 Frequently Used Functions

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Frequently Used Functions

• str(object) structure of an object

• class(object) class or type of an object
• names(object) names
• c(object,object,...) combine objects into a vector
• cbind(object, object, ...) combine objects as columns
• rbind(object, object, ...) combine objects as rows
• object() prints the object
• ls() list current objects
• rm(object) delete an object
• rm(list=ls()) delete an objects in memory
• names(object) print names for current objects
• edit(object)->newobject edit copy and save as newobject
• fix(object) edit in place
• levels(object) list levels of factor object.
• length(object) number of elements or components
• lengths(object) number of elements within objects
• dim(object) dimensions of an object
• ncol(object) number of columns of a matrix or data frame object
• nrow(object) number of rows of a matrix or data frame object
• head(mydata, n=10) print first 10 rows of mydata
• tail(mydata, n=5), print last 5 rows of mydata
• args(function), Shows arguments of a function

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