Practicing R for Statistical Computing

Book excerpt: This book is designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to R programming for data analysis, manipulation and presentation. It covers fundamental data structures such as vectors, matrices, arrays and lists, along with techniques for exploratory data analysis, data transformation and manipulation. The book explains basic statistical concepts and demonstrates their implementation using R, including descriptive statistics, graphical representation of data, probability, popular probability distributions and hypothesis testing. It also explores linear and non-linear modeling, model selection and diagnostic tools in R. The book also covers flow control and conditional calculations by using ‘‘if’’ conditions and loops and discusses useful functions and resources for further learning. It provides an extensive list of functions grouped according to statistics classification, which can be helpful for both statisticians and R programmers. The use of different graphic devices, high-level and low-level graphical functions and adjustment of parameters are also explained. Throughout the book, R commands, functions and objects are printed in a different font for easy identification. Common errors, warnings and mistakes in R are also discussed and classified with explanations on how to prevent them.