Python and R for the Modern Data Scientist

Chapter 2. R for Pythonistas

Rick J. Scavetta

Welcome, brave Pythonista, to the world of the useR!¹ In this chapter I introduce you to R’s core features and try to address some of the confusing bits that you’ll encounter along the way. Thus, it’s useful to mention what we’re not going to do.

First, we’re not writing for the naïve data scientist. If you want to learn R from scratch, there are many wonderful resources available—too many to name. We encourage you to explore them and choose those that suit your needs and learning style. Here, we’ll bring up topics and concerns that may confuse the complete novice. We’ll take some detours to explain topics that we hope will specifically help the friendly Pythonista to adapt to R more easily.

Second, this is not a bilingual dictionary; you’ll find that in the Appendix, but without context it’s not really useful. Here, we want to take you through a journey of exploRation and undeRstanding. We want you to get a feel for R so that you begin to think R, becoming bilingual. Thus, for the sake of narrative, we may introduce some items much later than when writing for a complete novice. Nonetheless, we hope that you’ll return back to this chapter when you need to remind yourself of how to do familiar tasks in a new language.

Third, this is not a comprehensive guide. Once you crack the R coconut, you’ll get plenty of enjoyment exploring the language more deeply to address your specific needs as they arise. As we mentioned in the first part ...