Nonparametric Statistical Methods Using R

Chapter 1

Getting Started with R

This chapter serves as a primer for R. We invite the reader to start his or her R session and follow along with our discussion. We assume the reader is familiar with basic summary statistics and graphics taught in standard introductory statistics courses. We present a short tour of the langage; those interested in a more thorough introduction are referred to a monograph on R (e.g., Chambers 2008). Also, there are a number of manuals available at the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) (http://cran.r-project.org/). An excellent overview, written by developers of R, is Venables and Ripley (2002).

R provides a built-in documentation system. Using the help function i.e. help(command) or ?command in your R session ...