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- R is a programming language designed for statistical analysis and graphics.
- Since R has been around since 1992, it has developed a large community and has over [13 thousand packages](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/) publicly available.
- What is really cool about R is that it is an open source [GNU](http://www.gnu.org/) project.
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- # R Syntax and Paradigms
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- The syntax of R is C esk with its use of curly braces.
- The type system of R is similar to Python where it can infer what type you are using.
- This "lazy" type system allows for "faster" development since you don't have to worry about declaring types -- this laziness makes it harder to debug and read your code.
- The type system of R is rather strange and distinctly different from most other languages.
- For starters, integers are represented as vectors of length 1.
- These things may feel weird at first, but, R's type system is one of the things that make it a great tool for manipulating data.
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- Did I mention that arrays start at 1?
- Technically, the thing which we refer to as an array in Java are really vectors in R.
- Arrays in R are data objects which can store data in more than two dimensions.
- Since R tries to follow mathematical notation, indexing starts at 1 -- just like in linear algebra.
- Using zero based indexing makes sense for languages like C because the index is used to get at a particular memory location from a pointer.
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- <youtube src="s3FozVfd7q4" />
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- I don't have the time to go over the basic syntax of R in a single blog post; however, I feel that this youtube video does a pretty good job.
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- # R Markdown
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- One of my favorite aspects of R is its markdown language called Rmd.
- Rmd is essentially markdown which has can have embedded R scripts run in it.
- The Rmd file is compiled down to a markdown file which is converted to either a PDF, HTML file, or a slide show using pandoc.
- You can provide options for the pandoc render using a YAMAL header in the Rmd file.
- This is an amazing tool for creating reports and writing research papers.
- The documents which you create are reproducible since you can share the source code to it.
- If the data which you are using changes, you simply have to recompile to document to get an updated view.
- You no longer have to re-generate a dozen graphs and update figures and statistics across your document.
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- # Resources
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- - [R for Data Science (Online Book)](https://r4ds.had.co.nz/)
- - [R Studio](https://www.rstudio.com/)
- - [R Official Website](https://www.r-project.org/)
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