R

WHAT is R?

R is an extremely popular, general-purpose programming language that is used in the social, physical, health, and financial sciences.  R is free to use, open-source, and offers a robust set of tools for conducting various kinds of analyses, research, organizing data, and a whole lot more!

WHY use R?

Compared to some programming languages, R is relatively  easy to read and understand with the ability to expand its functionality.  Additionally, the community of software developers using R is very large and there is an equally large number of freely available packages, add-ons, and environments that we can benefit from.

HOW is R used for data analysis?

• Data Manipulation and Management
• Statistical Modeling
• Machine Learning & Data Science
• Data Collection (APIs, Web Scraping)

To get started using R, you will need to download and install R and RStudio.  Both of these tools are 100% free to everyone in the world.

First, you need to download and install the R programming language itself.  You can download R directly from the following website:

• The R Project for Statistical Computing: https://www.r-project.org/

Second, most R users will want to download and install RStudio.  RStudio is an application that provides a relatively use-friendly interface for working with R code, data, and analyses.  After you have installed R, you can download and install RStudio from the following website:

• RStudio: https://rstudio.com/products/rstudio/​