The Book of R

13ELEMENTARY STATISTICS

Statistics is the practice of turning data into information to identify trends and understand features of populations. This chapter will cover some basic definitions and use R to demonstrate their application.

13.1 Describing Raw Data

Often, the first thing statistical analysts are faced with is raw data—in other words, the records or observations that make up a sample. Depending on the nature of the intended analysis, these data could be stored in a specialized R object, often a data frame (Chapter 5), possibly read in from an external file using techniques from Chapter 8. Before you can begin summarizing or modeling your ...