Free resources for learning R

Question

I'm interested in learning R on the cheap. What's the best free resource/book/tutorial for learning R?

You should add your background. Programmers who came to R have different issues than people without a programming background. — Christian, Jul 20 '10 at 16:06
Refer to SO. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192369/books-for-learning-the-r-language/2270793 — aL3xa, Jul 29 '10 at 19:17
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3375808/learning-r-where-does-one-start on SO — Brandon Bertelsen, Aug 05 '10 at 21:05

score 57 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 11 '20 at 14:32

Some useful R links (find out the link that suits you):

Intro:

for R basics http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/usingR.pdf
for data manipulation http://had.co.nz/plyr/plyr-intro-090510.pdf
http://portal.stats.ox.ac.uk/userdata/ruth/APTS2012/APTS.html
Interactive intro to R programming language https://www.datacamp.com/courses/introduction-to-r
Application focused R tutorial https://www.teamleada.com/tutorials/introduction-to-statistical-programming-in-r
In-browser learning for R http://tryr.codeschool.com/

with a focus on economics:

lecture notes with R code http://www.econ.uiuc.edu/~econ472/e-Tutorial.html
A brief guide to R and Economics http://people.su.se/~ma/R_intro/R_intro.pdf

Graphics: plots, maps, etc.:

tutorial with info on plots http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Rossiter-RIntro-ITC.pdf
a graph gallery of R plots and charts with supporting code http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/
A tutorial for Lattice http://osiris.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0her/Statistics/UsingLatticeGraphicsInR.htm
Ggplot R graphics http://had.co.nz/ggplot2/
Ggplot Vs Lattice @ http://had.co.nz/ggplot/vs-lattice.html
Multiple tutorials for using ggplot2 and Lattice http://learnr.wordpress.com/tag/ggplot2/
Google Charts with R http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/sss/archives/2008/04/google_charts_f_1.shtml
Introduction to using RGoogleMaps @ http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RgoogleMaps/vignettes/RgoogleMaps-intro.pdf
Thematic Maps with R https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1260965/developing-geographic-thematic-maps-with-r
geographic maps in R http://smartdatacollective.com/Home/22052

GUIs:

Poor Man GUI for R http://wiener.math.csi.cuny.edu/pmg/
R Commander is a robust GUI for R http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/installation-notes.html
JGR is a Java-based GUI for R http://jgr.markushelbig.org/Screenshots.html

Time series & finance:

a good beginner’s tutorial for Time Series http://www.stat.pitt.edu/stoffer/tsa2/index.html
Interesting time series packages in R http://robjhyndman.com/software
advanced time series in R http://www.wise.xmu.edu.cn/2007summerworkshop/download/Advanced%20Topics%20in%20Time%20Series%20Econometrics%20Using%20R1_ZongwuCAI.pdf
provides a great analysis and visualization framework for quantitative trading http://www.quantmod.com/
Guide to Credit Scoring using R http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Sharma-CreditScoring.pdf
an Open Source framework for Financial Analysis http://www.rmetrics.org/

Data / text mining:

A Data Mining tool in R http://rattle.togaware.com/
An online e-book for Data Mining with R http://www.liaad.up.pt/~ltorgo/DataMiningWithR/
Introduction to the Text Mining package in R http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/tm/vignettes/tm.pdf

Other statistical techniques:

Quick-R http://www.statmethods.net/
annotated guides for a variety of models http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/r/dae/default.htm
Social Network Analysis http://www.r-project.org/conferences/useR-2008/slides/Bojanowski.pdf

Editors:

Komodo Edit R editor http://www.sciviews.org/SciViews-K/index.html
Tinn-R makes for a good R editor http://www.sciviews.org/Tinn-R/
An Eclipse plugin for R @ http://www.walware.de/goto/statet
Instructions to install StatET in Eclipse http://www.splusbook.com/Rintro/R_Eclipse_StatET.pdf
RStudio http://rstudio.org/
Emacs Speaks Statistics, a statistical language package for Emacs http://ess.r-project.org/

Interfacing w/ other languages / software:

to embed R data frames in Excel via multiple approaches http://learnr.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/export-data-frames-to-multi-worksheet-excel-file/
provides a tool to make R usable from Excel http://www.statconn.com/
Connect to MySQL from R http://erikvold.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/8/20/how-to-connect-to-mysql-with-r-in-wndows-using-rmysql
info about pulling data from SAS, STATA, SPSS, etc. http://www.statmethods.net/input/importingdata.html
Latex http://www.stat.uni-muenchen.de/~leisch/Sweave/
R2HTML http://www.feferraz.net/en/P/R2HTML

Blogs, newsletters, etc.:

A very informative blog http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/
A blog aggregator for posts about R http://www.r-bloggers.com/
R mailing lists http://www.r-project.org/mail.html
R newsletter (old) http://cran.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/
R journal (current) http://journal.r-project.org/

Other / uncategorized: (as of yet)

Web Scraping in R http://www.programmingr.com/content/webscraping-using-readlines-and-rcurl
a very interesting list of packages that is seriously worth a look http://www.omegahat.org/
Commercial versions of R @ http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/
Red R for R tasks http://code.google.com/p/r-orange/
KNIME for R (worth a serious look) http://www.knime.org/introduction/screenshots
R Tutorial for Titanic https://statsguys.wordpress.com/

This list was becoming less usable. It needs to be organized & at least somewhat standardized to be useful. However, there is no reason to think my reworked version is ideal; eg I'm not familiar w/ all the links. People w/ more expertise should feel free to add / change / shuffle or otherwise reorganize. — gung - Reinstate Monica, Jun 12 '12 at 18:15

score 24 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 19 '10 at 21:39

24

If I had to choose one thing, make sure that you read "The R Inferno".

There are many good resources on the R homepage, but in particular, read "An Introduction to R" and "The R Language Definition".

answered Jul 19 '10 at 21:39

Shane

11,961
17
71
89

Agreed, though I'd choose it as my second book, after _R Cookbook (O'Reilly)_ (not free!) _R Inferno_ felt like _Cookbook Part 2_. – Darren Cook Jan 06 '12 at 04:19
http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/hints_R_begin.html is sort of Circle 0 of 'The R Inferno'. I agree with Darren -- I don't see the Inferno as introductory. – Patrick Burns Feb 21 '12 at 16:46

score 18 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 04 '15 at 01:14

18

Quick-R can be a good place to start.

A little bit data mining oriented R and Data Mining resources: Examples and Case Studies and R Reference Card for Data Mining.

edited Jul 04 '15 at 01:14

emarshah

103
3

answered Jul 19 '10 at 21:48

radek

1,207
2
15
37

Jeromy Anglim · Answer 4 · 2011-05-27T03:38:47.843

13

If you like learning through videos, I collated a list of R training videos.
I also prepared a general post on learning R with suggestions on books, online manuals, blogs, videos, user interfaces, and more.

edited May 27 '11 at 03:38

answered Jul 20 '10 at 03:13

Jeromy Anglim

42,044
23
146
250

score 11 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 29 '10 at 19:01

11

Try IPSUR, Introduction to Probability and Statistics Using R. It's a free book, free in the GNU sense of the word.

http://ipsur.r-forge.r-project.org/book/index.php

It's definitely open source - on the download page you can download the LaTeX source or the lyx source used to generate this.

answered Jul 29 '10 at 19:01

Stephen Turner

4,183
8
27
33

1

That URL didn't work for me, but this did: http://ipsur.r-forge.r-project.org/book/index.html – zbicyclist May 27 '11 at 04:07

score 8 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 30 '10 at 17:10

8

One resource is 'Some hints for the R beginner' at http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/hints_R_begin.html

answered Jul 30 '10 at 17:10

Welcome -- Nice to see you here, Pat! – Dirk Eddelbuettel Jul 30 '10 at 18:35

score 8 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 19 '10 at 21:39

8

The official guides are pretty nice; check out http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html . There is also a lot of contributed documentation there.

answered Jul 19 '10 at 21:39

Graham Cookson · Answer 8 · 2010-07-20T11:37:25.383

8

If you're an economist/econometrician then Grant Farnworth's paper on using R is indispensable and is available on CRAN at: http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Farnsworth-EconometricsInR.pdf

edited Jul 20 '10 at 11:37

answered Jul 20 '10 at 09:26

Graham Cookson

7,543
6
41
35

score 8 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 26 '10 at 20:25

8

If you have experience in other languages, these "R Rosetta Stone" videos may be useful:

These are all included in the video list added by Jeromy, so big +1 for his list.

answered Jul 26 '10 at 20:25

DrewConway

346
1
2
8

score 7 · Answer 10 · answered Jul 20 '10 at 04:49

7

I have written a document that is freely available at my website and on CRAN. See the linked page:

icebreakeR

The datasets that are used in the document are also linked from that page. Feedback is welcome and appreciated!

Andrew

answered Jul 20 '10 at 04:49

Andrew Robinson

739
5
9

score 6 · Answer 11 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:39

6

After you learn the basics, I find the following sites very useful:

R-bloggers.
Subscribing to the Stack overflow R tag.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:39

Community

1

answered Jul 19 '10 at 21:42

csgillespie

11,849
9
56
85

score 6 · Answer 12 · answered Mar 30 '13 at 23:05

6

A large number of short videos that cover a lot of useful tasks with R (91 videos as of March 2013): http://www.twotorials.com/

Here's a nice new interactive online tutorial on the basics of R: http://tryr.codeschool.com/

answered Mar 30 '13 at 23:05

Ben

729
9
22

score 5 · Answer 13 · answered Jul 20 '10 at 11:54

5

The R project website has lots of manuals to start, and I suggest you the Nabble R forum and the R-bloggers site as well.

answered Jul 20 '10 at 11:54

Manuel Ramón

2,045
4
15
16

score 5 · Answer 14 · answered Jul 26 '10 at 20:19

5

If you already know another programming language, these notes may help point out some of the ways R might surprise you.

answered Jul 26 '10 at 20:19

John D. Cook

3,714
1
24
28

score 4 · Answer 15 · answered Oct 10 '10 at 06:27

4

One more: R bloggers has many posts with tutorials materials:

http://www.r-bloggers.com/?s=tutorial

answered Oct 10 '10 at 06:27

Tal Galili

19,935
32
133
195

score 4 · Answer 16 · answered Jul 26 '10 at 19:53

4

I liked these lectures: Statistical Aspects of Data Mining. The lecturer is solving example problems using R.

answered Jul 26 '10 at 19:53

niko

1,261
3
15
18

score 4 · Answer 17 · answered Jul 29 '10 at 18:33

If you are coming from a SAS or SPSS background, check out:

http://sites.google.com/site/r4statistics/

This is the companion site to the book, R for SAS and SPSS Users by Robert Muenchen and a free version of the book can be found here.

score 2 · Answer 18 · answered Aug 02 '10 at 16:55

2

There are some very good learning materials here: http://scc.stat.ucla.edu/mini-courses/materials-from-past-mini-courses/spring-2009-mini-course-materials/

answered Aug 02 '10 at 16:55

score 2 · Answer 19 · answered Jul 27 '12 at 15:17

Look for R Users Groups in your area. They are growing around the world.

http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/local-r-groups.html

If you don't have one then help get one started. I'm sure you will be able to find like minded interested folks.

As for helpful links the Dallas R Users Group has a nice list.

http://www.meetup.com/Dallas-R-Users-Group/pages/R_Helpful_Links/

score 2 · Answer 20 · answered Aug 10 '13 at 13:52

2

http://www.datamind.org offers interactive R tutorials, currently focused at real beginners

answered Aug 10 '13 at 13:52

Jonathan Cornelissen

1
1

score 1 · Answer 21 · answered Aug 09 '13 at 21:49

1

If you'd like a beginners tutorial to R in the context of Econometrics this may be a good starting point as well: http://www.quandl.com/learn/working-with-quandl-and-r

answered Aug 09 '13 at 21:49

Sean C

1
1

Free resources for learning R

21 Answers21

Some useful R links (find out the link that suits you):

Linked

Related