# Learn R-Programming with Statistical Background

I am a statistician. I'm pretty good with the concepts of topics like Linear & Logistic Regression & Time Series. But in order to run data I need to learn the R language. Since, having no programming background makes it difficult for me to understand it.

How can I easily learn and construct commands in R software? What could help me with achieving that?

I do not have any formal training in programming or Statistics, at least not to a sufficient enough level. I am trying to teach myself R and stats, and going to write what so far I found helpful. So the answer is not based on broad knowledge and therefore inherently personal.
If you're a complete beginner, then watching videos would be useful. But since watching videos is more passive than learning from reading/studying a book, etc., videos are not as effective as books or other written materials. Second, most of the video tutorials are shallow, i.e., they do not dig deep enough to be practically useful. Nonetheless, video tutorials are great to begin with. Other answers already mentioned most popular and recognized video tutorials. Below is a list of some written materials I would recommend:

online/free materials:

Though might not be recommended for absolute beginners, learning to visualize data with ggplot2 and manipulate with dplyr is certainly worth it.

I can attest to Coursera's R Programming and Practical Machine Learning courses, as I've taken both.

This should give you a solid understanding of R programming.

Although, if you need a solid foundation of object-oriented programming in general, I'd try sites like CodeAcademy or CodeSchool mentioned below.

• I'd disagree on the R Programming course - it assumes you have some understanding of basic programming concepts. It's not for people who have never written a for loop before. – neuron Jun 2 '16 at 16:26
• True. Included CodeAcademy and CodeSchool in my response, for general object-oriented courses. – Mario Carloni Jun 2 '16 at 16:43

You could take one of the many, freely available online course on R. For example:

Both should be fairly easy going even if you don't have any background in programming. They also touch practical aspects with small integrated assignments, so you will actually write some R with most of them. And of course those two courses are just examples, there are tons of other courses that will fulfill this criteria.

You might also want to take a look at the list of free online courses at RDataMining - some of those might be interesting to you as well.

Like Moazzem Hossen, I don't have any formal education in programming or statistics, however I do have a bit of experience (I definitely don't consider myself a developer though) in a few programming languages. I have been considering doing the coursera program, but I've also found some reasonably-priced courses on Udemy as well that focus solely on R and are put together well for people who are starting from zero.

Personally, I find the way lesson plans are put together really affect how effectively I learn, so a good teacher is important. I'm not affiliated with this guy at all, but I'm taking this course right now and I like his teaching style and have taken his courses on other topics as well. Good luck!

The single best current resource is Hadley Wickham and Garret Grolemund's book R for Data Science. It's incomplete. If you know everything in it, you will be in excellent shape.

It can be difficult to learn R, partly because there are many ways of doing the same thing. And some of those ways are better than others, but when learning you cannot judge the quality of an approach.

If you have any knowledge of programming then (as mentioned) Hadley Wickham's Advanced-R book is incredible. You do not really understand R unless you are familiar with the topics that the books covers. Many of the "gotchas" and "tripwires" in R become clear and logical after reading Advanced-R.