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1.1 - Introducing R

R is a free, open-source software platform for data analysis and visualization, offering comprehensive statistical analysis and advanced graphing capabilities. It can be downloaded from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) and is compatible with various operating systems, including Windows and Mac. Additionally, several Graphical User Interface applications like R Commander and RStudio simplify its use for users.

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6 views

1.1 - Introducing R

R is a free, open-source software platform for data analysis and visualization, offering comprehensive statistical analysis and advanced graphing capabilities. It can be downloaded from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) and is compatible with various operating systems, including Windows and Mac. Additionally, several Graphical User Interface applications like R Commander and RStudio simplify its use for users.

Uploaded by

nafiszaani
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introducing R

What is R?

R is a free, open-source software that is one of the most popular platforms for
data analysis and visualization that is available today.

Why should I use R?

Although there exists a wide range of statistical and graphing packages, such as
Microsoft Excel, SPSS, SAS, and Minitab, among others, R is recommended
because of the many features that it possesses:

R is free! They say that the best things in life are free, so there you go.

You can do just about any type of statistical analysis in R, as it offers a


comprehensive platform for statistical analysis.

State-of-the-art graphing capabilities that can be used to visualize data from


the simplest to the most complex.

A powerful platform for interactive data analysis.

Easily imports data from a wide variety of sources.

Is extensible and, therefore, provides a natural language for quickly


programming recently published methods.

Contains advanced statistical routines available as packages. New methods


become available for download weekly.

There are guides for installing R on smartphones.


Download and Installation

R is available freely for download on the Comprehensive R Archive Network


(CRAN) at

www.cran.r-project.org

Once you are at the CRAN site, you will be asked to select a mirror site from a list.
Select one that is relatively near your location. A mirror site is, roughly, a server
that contains a duplicate set of files as the one available at the central CRAN site,
thus sharing the responsibility to ensure rapid distribution of data when there is
a heavy demand.

Once this is done, you will get a window that looks like the one shown below.

Click on the link for your operating system, and follow the instructions for your
platform. You will now see a window like the one below (For Windows).

Click on ‘Install R for the first time,’ then click on ‘Download’ in the window like
the one shown below.
You download the base product, called base R, directly to your device and then
run the setup program with a name like R.exe (for a PC), or R.dmg (for a Mac).
Click ' Run ' when asked whether you want to ‘Run’ or ‘Save’ the file. It is all
automatic from there ‒ just follow the Wizard. After installation, simply click on
the R icon to begin using R.

Install Rtools

This addition is necessary, especially if you want to use packages that export
Excel workbooks (most of them do).

Go to http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools/. Click on the download link


in the window like the one below.

Run the downloaded file ‒ Rtools34.exe. Follow the Wizard.

You can later extend R’s functionality by downloading optional modules called
packages (also from CRAN). World-wide sources freely contribute to the
packages.
GUIs

Several Graphical User Interface (GUI) applications, such as R Commander and


RStudio, are available. They offer the power of R through menus, graphical icons,
and dialogs and run on a wide variety of platforms, including Windows, Unix,
Linux, and Mac OS X. These GUIs are point-and-click interfaces that sit on top of R
and serve to simplify its use by reducing the number of lines of code the user
needs to write, and for some operations, eliminating the writing of code. In this
course, we will focus on RStudio and its use in a subsequent module since it is
best practice first to learn base R.

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