The R language is widely used by statisticians for data analysis, and the popularity of R programming has therefore increased substantially in recent years. The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) gathers increasing amounts of data that can be analyzed to gain useful insights into trends. R for Data Analysis in easy steps has an easy-to-follow style that will appeal to anyone who wants to produce graphic visualizations to gain insights from gathered data. R for Data Analysis in easy steps begins by explaining core programming principles of the R programming language, which stores data in “vectors” from which simple graphs can be plotted. Next, the book describes how to create “matrices” to store and manipulate data from which graphs can be plotted to provide better insights. This book then demonstrates how to create “data frames” from imported data sets, and how to employ the “Grammar of Graphics” to produce advanced visualizations that can best illustrate useful insights from your data. R for Data Analysis in easy steps contains separate chapters on the major features of the R programming language. There are complete example programs that demonstrate how to create Line graphs, Bar charts, Histograms, Scatter graphs, Box plots, and more. The code for each R script is listed, together with screenshots that illustrate the actual output when that script has been executed. The free, downloadable example R code is provided for clearer understanding. By the end of this book you will have gained a sound understanding of R programming, and be able to write your own scripts that can be executed to produce graphic visualizations for data analysis. You need have no previous knowledge of any programming language, so it's ideal for the newcomer to computer programming.
"R for Data Analysis in easy steps - R Programming essentials" is a concise well written introduction to the R programming language that will be suitable for most readers but may be too rudimentary for experienced programmers or data scientists.
The book is mostly a high level survey of the most basic elements of using R. As such it covers fundamental programming concepts from an R perspective and some simple uses of the language.
Completing this book will not result in mastery of the R language but it will provide a solid understanding of the most basic concepts and skills and a foundation for further study.
Technical details are kept to a minimum and this book simplifies complex topics. For the most part this is done well, such as in the case of vectors, which are explained in a very accessible manner. There are other case where this is not the case though, such as with the coverage of statistics functions and plotting functionality.
Covers the basics, it has a fair number of annoying errors and a few dated references, most notably using <- instead of = for assignment??! What the fuck, why make things look incomprehensible??
However, it is a decent getting started how-to for the absolute beginner, and it does convey the utility of R.
The author's sample scripts are available from the publisher some of the syntax is deprecated ... and some scripts minor errors ... but overall a very helpful introduction to R