Chapter 15
Using Open Source R for Data Science
IN THIS CHAPTER
Grasping the basics concepts and vocabulary of R
Exploring objects in R
Previewing popular R packages
Playing with more advanced R packages
R is an open-source, free statistical software system that, like Python, has been widely adopted across the data science sector over the past decade. In fact, a somewhat never-ending squabble takes place among data science types about which programming language is best suited for data science. Practitioners who favor R generally do so because of its advanced statistical programming and data visualization capabilities — capabilities that simply can’t be replicated in Python. When it comes to data science practitioners, specifically, R’s user base is broader than Python’s. (For more on Python, see Chapter 14.)
You can download the R programming language and the packages that support it from http://cran.r-project.org.
R is not as easy to learn as Python, but R can be more powerful for certain types of advanced statistical analyses. Although R’s learning curve is somewhat steeper than ...
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