I'm interested in learning R on the cheap. What's the best free resource/book/tutorial for learning R?
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6$\begingroup$ You should add your background. Programmers who came to R have different issues than people without a programming background. $\endgroup$– ChristianJul 20, 2010 at 16:06
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3$\begingroup$ Refer to SO. stackoverflow.com/questions/192369/… $\endgroup$– aL3xaJul 29, 2010 at 19:17
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1$\begingroup$ stackoverflow.com/questions/3375808/… on SO $\endgroup$– Brandon BertelsenAug 5, 2010 at 21:05
21 Answers
Some useful R links (find out the link that suits you):
Intro:
- for R basics http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/usingR.pdf
- for data manipulation http://had.co.nz/plyr/plyr-intro-090510.pdf
- http://portal.stats.ox.ac.uk/userdata/ruth/APTS2012/APTS.html
- Interactive intro to R programming language https://www.datacamp.com/courses/introduction-to-r
- Application focused R tutorial https://www.teamleada.com/tutorials/introduction-to-statistical-programming-in-r
- In-browser learning for R http://tryr.codeschool.com/
with a focus on economics:
- lecture notes with R code http://www.econ.uiuc.edu/~econ472/e-Tutorial.html
- A brief guide to R and Economics http://people.su.se/~ma/R_intro/R_intro.pdf
Graphics: plots, maps, etc.:
- tutorial with info on plots http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Rossiter-RIntro-ITC.pdf
- a graph gallery of R plots and charts with supporting code http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/
- A tutorial for Lattice http://osiris.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0her/Statistics/UsingLatticeGraphicsInR.htm
- Ggplot R graphics http://had.co.nz/ggplot2/
- Ggplot Vs Lattice @ http://had.co.nz/ggplot/vs-lattice.html
- Multiple tutorials for using ggplot2 and Lattice http://learnr.wordpress.com/tag/ggplot2/
- Google Charts with R http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/sss/archives/2008/04/google_charts_f_1.shtml
- Introduction to using RGoogleMaps @ http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RgoogleMaps/vignettes/RgoogleMaps-intro.pdf
- Thematic Maps with R https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1260965/developing-geographic-thematic-maps-with-r
- geographic maps in R http://smartdatacollective.com/Home/22052
GUIs:
- Poor Man GUI for R http://wiener.math.csi.cuny.edu/pmg/
- R Commander is a robust GUI for R http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/installation-notes.html
- JGR is a Java-based GUI for R http://jgr.markushelbig.org/Screenshots.html
Time series & finance:
a good beginner’s tutorial for Time Series http://www.stat.pitt.edu/stoffer/tsa2/index.html
Interesting time series packages in R http://robjhyndman.com/software
advanced time series in R http://www.wise.xmu.edu.cn/2007summerworkshop/download/Advanced%20Topics%20in%20Time%20Series%20Econometrics%20Using%20R1_ZongwuCAI.pdf
provides a great analysis and visualization framework for quantitative trading http://www.quantmod.com/
Guide to Credit Scoring using R http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Sharma-CreditScoring.pdf
an Open Source framework for Financial Analysis http://www.rmetrics.org/
Data / text mining:
- A Data Mining tool in R http://rattle.togaware.com/
- An online e-book for Data Mining with R http://www.liaad.up.pt/~ltorgo/DataMiningWithR/
- Introduction to the Text Mining package in R http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/tm/vignettes/tm.pdf
Other statistical techniques:
- Quick-R http://www.statmethods.net/
- annotated guides for a variety of models http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/r/dae/default.htm
- Social Network Analysis http://www.r-project.org/conferences/useR-2008/slides/Bojanowski.pdf
Editors:
- Komodo Edit R editor http://www.sciviews.org/SciViews-K/index.html
- Tinn-R makes for a good R editor http://www.sciviews.org/Tinn-R/
- An Eclipse plugin for R @ http://www.walware.de/goto/statet
- Instructions to install StatET in Eclipse http://www.splusbook.com/Rintro/R_Eclipse_StatET.pdf
- RStudio http://rstudio.org/
- Emacs Speaks Statistics, a statistical language package for Emacs http://ess.r-project.org/
Interfacing w/ other languages / software:
- to embed R data frames in Excel via multiple approaches http://learnr.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/export-data-frames-to-multi-worksheet-excel-file/
- provides a tool to make R usable from Excel http://www.statconn.com/
- Connect to MySQL from R http://erikvold.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/8/20/how-to-connect-to-mysql-with-r-in-wndows-using-rmysql
- info about pulling data from SAS, STATA, SPSS, etc. http://www.statmethods.net/input/importingdata.html
- Latex http://www.stat.uni-muenchen.de/~leisch/Sweave/
- R2HTML http://www.feferraz.net/en/P/R2HTML
Blogs, newsletters, etc.:
- A very informative blog http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/
- A blog aggregator for posts about R http://www.r-bloggers.com/
- R mailing lists http://www.r-project.org/mail.html
- R newsletter (old) http://cran.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/
- R journal (current) http://journal.r-project.org/
Other / uncategorized: (as of yet)
- Web Scraping in R http://www.programmingr.com/content/webscraping-using-readlines-and-rcurl
- a very interesting list of packages that is seriously worth a look http://www.omegahat.org/
- Commercial versions of R @ http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/
- Red R for R tasks http://code.google.com/p/r-orange/
- KNIME for R (worth a serious look) http://www.knime.org/introduction/screenshots
- R Tutorial for Titanic https://statsguys.wordpress.com/
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5$\begingroup$ This list was becoming less usable. It needs to be organized & at least somewhat standardized to be useful. However, there is no reason to think my reworked version is ideal; eg I'm not familiar w/ all the links. People w/ more expertise should feel free to add / change / shuffle or otherwise reorganize. $\endgroup$ Jun 12, 2012 at 18:15
If I had to choose one thing, make sure that you read "The R Inferno".
There are many good resources on the R homepage, but in particular, read "An Introduction to R" and "The R Language Definition".
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$\begingroup$ Agreed, though I'd choose it as my second book, after R Cookbook (O'Reilly) (not free!) R Inferno felt like Cookbook Part 2. $\endgroup$ Jan 6, 2012 at 4:19
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$\begingroup$ burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/hints_R_begin.html is sort of Circle 0 of 'The R Inferno'. I agree with Darren -- I don't see the Inferno as introductory. $\endgroup$ Feb 21, 2012 at 16:46
Quick-R can be a good place to start.
A little bit data mining oriented R and Data Mining resources: Examples and Case Studies and R Reference Card for Data Mining.
- If you like learning through videos, I collated a list of R training videos.
- I also prepared a general post on learning R with suggestions on books, online manuals, blogs, videos, user interfaces, and more.
Try IPSUR, Introduction to Probability and Statistics Using R. It's a free book, free in the GNU sense of the word.
http://ipsur.r-forge.r-project.org/book/index.php
It's definitely open source - on the download page you can download the LaTeX source or the lyx source used to generate this.
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1$\begingroup$ That URL didn't work for me, but this did: ipsur.r-forge.r-project.org/book/index.html $\endgroup$ May 27, 2011 at 4:07
The official guides are pretty nice; check out http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html . There is also a lot of contributed documentation there.
If you're an economist/econometrician then Grant Farnworth's paper on using R is indispensable and is available on CRAN at: http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Farnsworth-EconometricsInR.pdf
If you have experience in other languages, these "R Rosetta Stone" videos may be useful:
These are all included in the video list added by Jeromy, so big +1 for his list.
One resource is 'Some hints for the R beginner' at http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/hints_R_begin.html
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$\begingroup$ Welcome -- Nice to see you here, Pat! $\endgroup$ Jul 30, 2010 at 18:35
I have written a document that is freely available at my website and on CRAN. See the linked page:
The datasets that are used in the document are also linked from that page. Feedback is welcome and appreciated!
Andrew
After you learn the basics, I find the following sites very useful:
- R-bloggers.
- Subscribing to the Stack overflow R tag.
A large number of short videos that cover a lot of useful tasks with R
(91 videos as of March 2013): http://www.twotorials.com/
Here's a nice new interactive online tutorial on the basics of R
: http://tryr.codeschool.com/
The R project website has lots of manuals to start, and I suggest you the Nabble R forum and the R-bloggers site as well.
If you already know another programming language, these notes may help point out some of the ways R might surprise you.
I liked these lectures: Statistical Aspects of Data Mining. The lecturer is solving example problems using R.
If you are coming from a SAS or SPSS background, check out:
http://sites.google.com/site/r4statistics/
This is the companion site to the book, R for SAS and SPSS Users by Robert Muenchen and a free version of the book can be found here.
One more: R bloggers has many posts with tutorials materials:
There are some very good learning materials here: http://scc.stat.ucla.edu/mini-courses/materials-from-past-mini-courses/spring-2009-mini-course-materials/
Look for R Users Groups in your area. They are growing around the world.
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/local-r-groups.html
If you don't have one then help get one started. I'm sure you will be able to find like minded interested folks.
As for helpful links the Dallas R Users Group has a nice list.
http://www.meetup.com/Dallas-R-Users-Group/pages/R_Helpful_Links/
http://www.datamind.org offers interactive R tutorials, currently focused at real beginners
If you'd like a beginners tutorial to R in the context of Econometrics this may be a good starting point as well: http://www.quandl.com/learn/working-with-quandl-and-r