Resources for Learning R

R is notoriously difficult, finicky and at times, needlessly challenging (note that I just said the same thing three times, but the repetition is for emphasis). R is also powerful, flexible and extraordinarily nimble. If you want to try out that great new thing, it’s probably possible to do it in R without programming it from scratch. But, I’m not doing you any favors by pretending that learning R is easy and painless. It is hard. R is a powerful programming language, and as usual, with great power, comes a lot of learning, practice and preparation to know how to use those powers.

In time, you may find you truly love solving the various logic puzzles R puts before you. Or not. Regardless, I wish you the best on your journey to learning R. This far from a comprehensive list (that’s not the point), but here are a few resources to help get you started.

Resources for the Beginner R User

• RStudio Primers
• R for Excel Users
• R for Reproducible Research
• Short Introduction to R
• YaRrr! The Pirate’s Guide to R
• EdX short courses

Resources for the Intermediate R User

• R 4 Data Science
• What They Forgot to Teach You (about R)

Miscellaneous very useful resources

• RStudio cheatsheets
• R Graphics Cookbook (a ggplot resource)
• Rmarkdown: the Definitive Guide
• Rweekly Blog (great place to learn about updates to the R ecosystem)
• R Studio Resources (there’s so much here!)
• RStudio YouTube Channel
• Happy Git with R
• Advanced R (book, it is rather advanced)