Chapter 1. R Basics
Downloading the Software
The first thing you will need to do is download the free R software and install it on your computer. Start your computer, open your web browser, and navigate to the R Project for Statistical Computing at http://www.r-project.org. Click “download R” and then choose one of the mirror sites close to you. (The R software is stored on many computers around the world, not just one. Because they all contain the same files, and they all look the same, they are called “mirror” sites. You can choose any one of those computers.) Click the site address and a page will open from which you can select the version of R that will run on your computer’s operating system. If your computer can run the latest version of R—3.0 or higher—that is best. However, if your computer is several years old and cannot run the most up-to-date version, get the latest one that your computer can run. There might be a few small differences from the examples in this book, but most things should work.
Follow the instructions and you should have R installed in a short time. This is base R, but there are thousands (this is not an exaggeration) of add-on “packages” that you can download for free to expand the functionality of your R installation. Depending on your particular needs, you might not add any of these, but you might be delightfully surprised to discover that there are capabilities you could not have imagined and now absolutely must have.