R in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

How This Book Is Organized

I’ve broken this book into parts:

• Part I, covers the basics of getting and running R. It’s designed to help get you up and running if you’re a new user, including a short tour of the many things you can do with R.

• Part II, picks up where the first section leaves off, describing the R language in detail.

• Part III, covers data processing in R: loading data into R, transforming data, and summarizing data.

• Part IV, describes how to plot data with R.

• Part V, covers statistical tests and models in R.

• Part VI, contains chapters that don’t belong elsewhere: tuning R programs, writing parallel R programs, and Bioconductor.

• Finally, I included an Appendix A describing functions and data sets included with the base distribution of R.

If you are new to R, install R and start with Chapter 3. Next, take a look at Chapter 5 to learn some of the rules of the R language. If you plan to use R for plotting, statistical tests, or statistical models, take a look at the appropriate chapter. Make sure you look at the first few sections of the chapter, because these provide an overview of how all the related functions work. (For example, don’t skip straight to Random forests for regression without reading Example: A Simple Linear Model.)