R Resources
R is a powerful tool that allows you to do a lot of things such as doing simple arithmetic calculations, organizing and analyzing your data, and even developing your own software. There are several, FREE resources that you can use to learn R. Below is a non-exhaustive list of tutorials, books, and videos that you can use (most of which are useful for data analysis), whether you’re just starting out or are more advanced in programming.
R at an Introductory Level
- swirlR is an R package that allows you to learn R in the console at your own pace
- Teacups, Giraffes, and Statistics is an interactive website that contains modules useful for learning statistics and R
- R for cats is an introductory guide to the use of R with cat photos (this is a bonus!)
- R in a Nutshell is a book that gives you a concise overview of the different things you can do in R
- Do More with R is a website listing video tutorials on specific topics in R (most videos are said to be < 10 minutes in length)
- Data Carpentry for Biologists is derived from the semester-long course taught By Dr. Ethan White that covers basic functions/use of R
Intermediate or Advanced use of R
- What They Forgot to Teach You about R is a set of tips on doing effective, reproducible data analysis in R (and less about actual programming)
- Happy Git and GitHub for the UseR is an instructional guide to using Git, GitHub, and R, which are all tools we use in the lab
- Foundations of Statistics with R is a course book for learning probability and statistics using R
- Efficient R Programming is another book that would help you increase your algorithmic and programming efficiency when using R
- Advanced R is the second edition of a book that teaches you more advanced programming skills in R (it makes use of a new package called rlang, which is an interface to low-level data structures and operations
- Ecological Models and Data in R is a book about building models implemented in a frequentist or Bayesian framework to answer ecological questions
Getting Help
There are times when your code might not seem to work. Apart from the brilliant lab members who you can easily reach out to through Slack for help, you can post questions/concerns in different online communities such as:
- RStudio Community for R-specific questions
- Stack Overflow for programming questions