4. Basics of R
R is a powerful tool for all manner of calculations, data manipulation and scientific computations. Before getting to the complex operations possible in R we must start with the basics. Like most languages R has its share of mathematical capability, variables, functions and data types.
4.1 Basic Math
Being a statistical programming language, R can certainly be used to do basic math and that is where we will start.
We begin with the “hello, world!” of basic math: 1 + 1. In the console there is a right angle bracket (>) where code should be entered. Simply test R by running
> 1 + 1 [1] 2
If this returns 2, then everything is great; if not, then something is very, very wrong.
Assuming it worked, let’s look at some slightly more ...
Get R for Everyone: Advanced Analytics and Graphics, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
