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I'm interested in learning R on the cheap. What's the best free resource/book/tutorial for learning R?

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21 Answers 21

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Some useful R links (find out the link that suits you):

Intro:

with a focus on economics:

Graphics: plots, maps, etc.:

GUIs:

Time series & finance:

Data / text mining:

Other statistical techniques:

Editors:

Interfacing w/ other languages / software:

Blogs, newsletters, etc.:

Other / uncategorized: (as of yet)

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    $\begingroup$ 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
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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
  • $\begingroup$ 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
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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.

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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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The official guides are pretty nice; check out http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html . There is also a lot of contributed documentation there.

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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

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If you have experience in other languages, these "R Rosetta Stone" videos may be useful:

  1. Python
  2. MATLAB
  3. SQL

These are all included in the video list added by Jeromy, so big +1 for his list.

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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
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I have written a document that is freely available at my website and on CRAN. See the linked page:

icebreakeR

The datasets that are used in the document are also linked from that page. Feedback is welcome and appreciated!

Andrew

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After you learn the basics, I find the following sites very useful:

  1. R-bloggers.
  2. Subscribing to the Stack overflow R tag.
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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/

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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.

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If you already know another programming language, these notes may help point out some of the ways R might surprise you.

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I liked these lectures: Statistical Aspects of Data Mining. The lecturer is solving example problems using R.

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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.

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One more: R bloggers has many posts with tutorials materials:

http://www.r-bloggers.com/?s=tutorial

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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/

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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/

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http://www.datamind.org offers interactive R tutorials, currently focused at real beginners

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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

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