Getting to know R and RStudio

Introduction

This week’s lab is aimed at familiarizing you with R and RStudio. R is a “free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.” While R was built primarily for statistical work, it serves many functions that extend well beyond statistics. R works as both a scripting environment (where programs are written and then run) and a command line interface (where commands are entered and return values immediately). R and its packages are freely available and are supported by a large user base.

Before we can get to working with data and , it is important to understand some fundamental concepts in computing and how they work in R, specifically. In this section you will learn how to:

• navigate the RStudio interface

• use basic commands in R

• differentiate between object types in R

• visualize data in R