2/8/23, 10:33 PM R Basics — Everything You Need to Know to Get Started with R | by Jason Chong | Towards Data Science
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R Basics — Everything You Need to Know to Get
Started with R
Vectors, functions, loops, probability, data visualisations, and more!
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2/8/23, 10:33 PM R Basics — Everything You Need to Know to Get Started with R | by Jason Chong | Towards Data Science
Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash
As part of my company’s university outreach initiative, I recently gave a presentation at
the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Women in Technology (WIT) society on the
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2/8/23, 10:33 PM R Basics — Everything You Need to Know to Get Started with R | by Jason Chong | Towards Data Science
fundamentals of R and RStudio.
In efforts to spread the content to a wider audience, I have decided to put together this
blog post to recap what was discussed in that presentation.
In summary, the topics of the presentation are as follows:
Introduction to R and RStudio
RStudio interface and basics
Basic arithmetic and variable assignment
Comparison and logical operators
Data types
Vectors
Functions
Loops and conditionals
Probability and statistics
Data frames
Data visualisation
To watch the full presentation or to access the workshop material, kindly check out the
WIT website here.
Introduction to R and RStudio
R is a popular programming language for statistical computing and graphics. It is
widely used among statisticians and data miners for developing statistical software and
data analysis.
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RStudio, on the other hand, is an Integrated Environment Environment (IDE) for R that
is available in two formats: RStudio Desktop, which is a regular desktop application,
and RStudio Server, which runs on a remote server and allows access to RStudio via a
web browser.
For the purpose of this workshop, we will be using RStudio Deskstop which you can
find here and install on your local computer.
So, why should you learn R?
R is open-source, which means that it is constantly being updated and improved by
other collaborative developers around the world
It has many external packages that are suited for different purposes e.g. data
manipulation, text cleaning, data visualisation, and more
It is relatively easy and straightforward to pick up once you are familiar with the
basic syntax
Almost everyone who works with data understands and knows how to use R, so you
should know it too!
RStudio interface and basics
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RStudio interface
RStudio is split into 4 quadrants:
Script (top left): where commands are written, executed, and saved
Environment (top right): lists the data, variables, and functions that are currently
in the workspace
Console (bottom left): for quickly testing code and where commands and outputs
are displayed, except plots
Plot (bottom right): where graphics are displayed
As for basic commands that you need to know when using RStudio:
Clear console: Ctrl + L
Quit RStudio: Ctrl + Q or quit()
Run code from the script: Ctrl + Enter
Remove saved variable: remove()
Clear everything in the workspace: remove(list = ls())
Access previous command: Arrow up
R awaits the next command: >
R is expecting more inputs: +
Comment / uncomment code in script: Ctrl + Shift + C
Getting help: help() or ?
Basic arithmetic and variable assignment
One of the most basic use cases of R is basic arithmetic. Moreover, you can also assign
values to variables in order to make your calculations more flexible and robust.
Add: +
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Subtract: -
Multiply: *
Divide: /
Power: ^ or **
Integer divide: %/%
Modulo (remainder after division): %%
Variable assignment: = or <-
Comparison and logical operators
Comparison operators compare a pair of values and return either a true or a false.
Equal to: == (note the difference between == , which is used for comparison and
=, which is used for assignment)
Not equal to: !=
Greater than: >
Less than: <
Greater than or equal to: >=
Less than or equal to: <=
Logical operators, on the other hand, are used to combine multiple true and false
statements.
And: &
Or: |
Data types
There are 3 main data types in R:
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Numeric: numbers e.g. 0, 3.5
Character: can contain letters, numbers, and special characters e.g. “hello, world”
Logical: boolean values i.e. true or false
Vectors
Vector is the most fundamental data structure that is used to store data in R. Vector is a
one-dimensional, ordered collection of data of the same data type.
To manually create a vector in R, we use c( ) . Alternatively, there are also built-in
functions in R specifically for the purpose of creating numeric vectors such rep( )
and seq( ) .
We can also access, add, remove, and alter the elements in any given vector.
Functions
Programming, much like any problem-solving scenario in general, is about breaking
down a big problem into smaller constituent components. This helps to not only better
structure and organise our work but more importantly, it allows for easier code review
and debugging when needed.
Functions are a piece of code that performs a certain task that can be readily reused
again. A function involves a simple 3-step process: input, process and output.
Inputs are sometimes called parameters or arguments which is what we pass into the
function itself. Process is what the function will perform on the inputs that it is being
given, which can be any form of data transformation or numerical computation. Last
but not least, the function will then return the desired output.
In addition to using the built-in functions in R, we can also construct our own function
using function( ) .
Some built-in functions in R include:
abs( )
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sqrt( )
round( )
log( )
exp( )
sin( )
Loops and conditionals
Loops repeatedly run a piece of code for a given number of times or until a condition
has been met. To define a condition in loops, we need if-else statements.
There are two types of loops in R which is consistent across many other programming
languages:
For loop: run a piece of code many times
While loop: keep running a piece of code until some condition fails
Probability and statistics
R was mainly built for statistical analysis and handling large volumes of data.
It has several built-in functions that enable summary statistics, probability
distributions as well as hypothesis testing to be carried out easily:
Summary statistics are used to summarise a set of observations e.g. summary( )
Probability distributions assign probabilities to different outcomes e.g. dbinom( ) ,
pnorm( ) , qchisq( ) , and rexp( )
Hypothesis testing offers a way to test the result of an experiment e.g. [Link]( ) ,
[Link]( ) , and [Link]( )
Data frames
Similar to a vector, data frame is data structure that is used for storing data in R. It is a
list of vectors which are of equal lengths but can be of different data types.
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The vectors are presented as columns, each with a name and represent variables. The
rows represent observations and can be named or unnamed.
While they can be constructed from scratch, data frames are typically produced from
importing data sets e.g. csv or Excel format files.
Data visualisation
A picture is worth a thousand words. A good data scientist is able to communicate
findings and persuade stakeholders through effective data visualisations.
Though the workshop covers a more advanced visualisation tool, that is the ggplot
package in tidyverse , there are still a variety of built-in visualisation functionalities in
R that do not require any external packages.
For that reason, I would recommend that you play around with the following built-in
functions first before exploring other external packages:
Scatter plot or line plot: plot( )
Add graph on top of existing plot: points( )
Draw straight lines on existing plot: abline( )
Box plot: boxplot( )
Histogram: hist( )
Column graph: barplot( )
Pie chart: pie( )
With that, we conclude the basics of using R and RStudio.
Please note that the workshop merely presents the fundamentals of R and is barely
scratching the surface of what R is actually capable of, especially when combined with
other robust external packages.
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Nevertheless, I hope the workshop will be able to help you get started with using R but
more importantly, inspire you to continue to discover what you can do using the
programming language.
Thank you for reading and happy learning!
WIT x Quantium Presents: R Coding Basics Workshop
Data Science Machine Learning R Programming Technology
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