R Data Science Quick Reference: A Pocket Guide to APIs, Libraries, and Packages

© Thomas Mailund 2019

Thomas MailundR Data Science Quick Referencehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4894-2_1

1. Introduction

Thomas Mailund¹ 

(1)

Aarhus, Denmark

 

R is a functional programming language with a focus on statistical analysis. It has built-in support for model specifications that can be manipulated as first-class objects, and an extensive collection of functions for dealing with probability distributions and model fitting, both built-in and through extension packages.

The language has a long history. It was created in 1992 and is based on an even older language, S, from 1976. Many quirks and inconsistencies have entered the language over the years. There are, for example, at least three partly incompatible ways of implementing object orientation, ...