R Tutorial

R is a programming language made for statistics, data analysis and charts. It is free, and it is used at universities, hospitals, banks and research centres around the world.

R was designed by statisticians, so tasks like finding an average, comparing groups or summarising a table take only one short line.

Why Learn R?

It has thousands of free packages for statistics, data cleaning and graphics
It is widely used in research, medicine, economics and social sciences
Data frames, tables of data, are built right into the language
Learning R and Python together makes you a stronger data analyst

A First Example

Example

marks <- c(78, 85, 62, 90, 74)
mean(marks)
summary(marks)

Output

[1] 77.8
   Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
   62.0    74.0    78.0    77.8    85.0    90.0

Two short lines give the average and a full summary of five students' marks.

What You Will Learn

Installing R and RStudio and running your first code
Syntax, comments and variables
Data types and operators
Vectors, the heart of R
Lists, matrices and factors
Data frames for working with tables
Decisions, loops and your own functions

No programming experience is needed to start.

Exercise

What does the c() function do in R?

Clears the screenCombines values into a vectorCounts charactersCreates a chart

What to Learn After R

If you want a general-purpose language for data and AI, learn Python, then Pandas for data tables and SciPy for statistics.

Want to learn data skills with a teacher? The Workownix Python Programming course covers programming and data analysis with real projects, online or at our institute in Orangi Town, Karachi.