Getting Started with R

What is R?

R is a programming language and environment specifically designed for statistical computing and graphics. It's widely used by data scientists, statisticians, and researchers for data analysis, visualization, and statistical modeling.

Installing R

Windows

1. Download R from CRAN
2. Run the installer and follow the setup wizard
3. Optionally install RStudio for a better development experience

macOS

1. Download R from CRAN
2. Open the downloaded .pkg file and follow the installation instructions
3. Install RStudio from rstudio.com

Linux

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install r-base

# Fedora
sudo dnf install R

# CentOS/RHEL
sudo yum install R

Your First R Session

Open R or RStudio and try these commands:

# Print "Hello, World!"
print("Hello, World!")

# Simple arithmetic
2 + 2
10 * 5
sqrt(16)

# Get help
help(print)
?print

RStudio Overview

RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for R that provides: - Console: Where you type and execute R commands - Script Editor: For writing and saving R scripts - Environment: Shows objects in your current session - Plots: Displays graphs and visualizations - Files/Help: File browser and help documentation

Basic R Syntax

# Comments start with #
# R is case-sensitive
# Variable assignment uses <- or =
x <- 10
y = 20

# Print values
x
print(x)

# Combine values
c(x, y)

Next Steps

Now that you have R installed and understand the basics, proceed to Variables and Data Types.