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I have a book called Statistics for Computer Scientists as well as my engineering statistics textbook, so I'm thinking about using various problems and examples in those to learn R, which is probably a good start. But can anyone recommend books and web sites that have information about R, especially if they are designed for people with some knowledge in statistics? Are there any medium to large projects or real-world situations where I, as a college student studying software engineering, might be able to use R to get a feel for it?

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Thomas Owens
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11 Answers11

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This is essentially a dump of my bookmarks, and what I have on my desk.

Getting started:

  1. A tutorial video on R
  2. John Cook's introduction to R for programmers
  3. R reference card
  4. Interactive tutorial: Introduction to R

Advanced:

  1. The R-Gallery
  2. The R Wiki
  3. Quick-R on advanced statistics

Books:

  1. The R Book (Covers the basics, classical statisitical tests, basic statistical modeling (ANOVA, ANCOVA, GLM, non-linear models, etc.), advanced statistical modeling (tree models, time-series analysis, spatial statistics, survival analysis, simulation), and twiddling with the graphics output.
  2. R Graphics (How to make R graphics look sharp)
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jason
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I found the The R Inferno by Patrick Burns very helpful to get to know R

From The R Inferno:

Abstract: If you are using R and you think you’re in hell, this is a map for you.

http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/S/Spoetry/Tutor/R_inferno.pdf

f3lix
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  • Actually R-inferno was mentioned in (linked in question) another SO thread: [Books for learning the R language](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192369/books-for-learning-the-r-language). But still it's worth mention, +1. – Marek Aug 30 '11 at 14:51
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My favorite R book is R Programming for Bioinformatics, by Robert Gentlemen. It doesn't try to teach you statistics at the same time as you learn the language, but rather presents the language from a programmer's viewpoint. I thought the book gave much better background than any of the online resources did. This is from the perspective of a biologist/programmer who didn't know much statistics when first learning R.

eleanorahowe
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Here is a real basic book on R from Princeton University and free

https://sites.google.com/site/undergraduateguidetor/

Buzz IT
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Here is a blog post Brendan O'Connor just wrote today that has some tips for learning R. Love it and hate it, R has come of age

Also, I second Jason's recommendation of "The R Book." It's expensive, but it's cheaper than buying several other books and being disappointed in them all.

John D. Cook
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  • The R Book is less expensive than most textbooks, and to be honest, I'm sure most textbooks are worse than The R Book considering the reviews. – Thomas Owens Jan 07 '09 at 15:15
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Years ago I used R in an undergrad statistics course which used Modern Applied Statistics with S-PLUS as its text (that edition is now out of print, but this book seems equivalent).

R is compatible enough with S in general that you can use a lot of the S resources out there.

Anthony Rizk
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I found this tutorial graphically well presented, accessable and quick:

http://www.statmethods.net/index.html

Davoud Taghawi-Nejad
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I just discovered the Rosetta Code site which posts problems and solutions using many different languages in parallel. It includes R examples.

JD Long
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Andrew Gelman at Columbia has written this excellent book which contains many examples and downloadable data files for further learning based on the concepts presented in the book. link text

Stedy
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  • Hi, it seems that the contents of the link has changed since? Could you please update it, because I would like to learn more about it. Thanks. – Unheilig Mar 08 '15 at 19:06
  • This is exactly why link-only answers are bad, thanks! – Stedy Mar 08 '15 at 19:30
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The Comprehensive R Archive Network seems promising. Here's an R book list that is two links away. Maybe some S-plus information also generalizes to R as well.

Yuval F
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the #R channel at irc.freenode.net is a good place for questions. rseek.org is also very convenient because google otherwise mixes R up with other connotations