January 2010
Beginner
634 pages
19h 50m
English
Content preview from R in a NutshellBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Exploring Package Repositories
The packages included with R are very useful; many users will never need to use any other features. However, you can find thousands of additional packages online.
The two biggest sources of packages are CRAN (Comprehensive R Archive Network) and Bioconductor, but some packages are available elsewhere. (If you know Perl, you’ll notice that CRAN is very similar to CPAN: the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network.) CRAN is hosted by the R Foundation (the same nonprofit organization that oversees R development). The archive contains a very large number of packages (there were 1,698 packages on February 24, 2009), covering a wide number of different applications. CRAN is hosted on a set of mirror sites around the world. Try to pick an archive site near you: you’ll minimize download times and help reduce the server load on the R Foundation.
Bioconductor is an open isource project for building tools to analyze genomic data. Bioconductor tools are built using R and are distributed as R packages. The Bioconductor packages are distributed separately from R, and most are not available on CRAN. There are dozens of different packages available directly through the Bioconductor project.
R-Forge is another interesting place to look for packages. The R-Forge site contains projects that are in progress, and it provides tools for developers to collaborate. You may find some interesting packages on this site, but please be sure to read the disclaimers and documentation because ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.