R Graphics Cookbook

Chapter 1. R Basics

This chapter covers the basics: installing and using packages and loading data.

If you want to get started quickly, most of the recipes in this book require the ggplot2 and gcookbook packages to be installed on your computer. To do this, run:

install.packages(c("ggplot2", "gcookbook"))

Then, in each R session, before running the examples in this book, you can load them with:

library(ggplot2)
library(gcookbook)

Note

Appendix A provides an introduction to the ggplot2 graphing package, for readers who are not already familiar with its use.

Packages in R are collections of functions and/or data that are bundled up for easy distribution, and installing a package will extend the functionality of R on your computer. If an R user creates a package and thinks that it might be useful for others, that user can distribute it through a package repository. The primary repository for distributing R packages is called CRAN (the Comprehensive R Archive Network), but there are others, such as Bioconductor and Omegahat.

Installing a Package

Problem

You want to install a package from CRAN.

Solution

Use install.packages() and give it the name of the package you want to install. To install ggplot2, run:

install.packages("ggplot2")

At this point you may be prompted to select a download mirror. You can either choose the one nearest to you, or, if you want to make sure you have the most up-to-date version of your package, choose the Austria site, which is the primary CRAN server.

Discussion

When you ...