Free Resources to Learn R
Date Posted:
Throughout the school year, and especially while working as a statistical consultant, people would often ask me about how I learned to program in R. Since my answer of: “trial and error, practice, and classes” was insufficient for just about everyone, I wanted to compile a few resources here.
Just as a quick note, just about any programming experience will help you in R as well. Concepts in languages such as Python and Java will directly transfer over to R. If you’re struggling to learn the basics of programming, feel free to look up an introduction to Python if you find more there.
If I find additional resources in the future, I will add it to this list.
Last updated: August 20th, 2020
R Programming
(In no particular order)
- R for Data Science by Grolemund and Wickham
- A great discussion of data exploration, wrangling, programming, modeling, and reporting.
- swirl
- Package within R that you can interactively work with to learn R programming and data science.
- YaRrr! The Pirate’s Guide to R
- Introduction to basic analytical tools in R. Meant with those with very little experience.
- R programming Wikibook
- Assumes readers have a background in statistics, describes various statistical implementations with references.
- Hands-On Programming with R by Garrett Grolemund
- Designed for non-programmers, basic introduction to R.
- RStudio Education - Beginners
- A curated list of resources to start learning R, starting at basic installation.
Communities to help learn
- Reddit
- There are multiple sub-communities within Reddit that discuss R and programming in general. Subreddits include: /r/rstats, /r/rlanguage, /r/rstudio, /r/learnprogramming.
- Stack Overflow
- Self explanatory. If you ever run into a bug/issue, this is probably the first place you should look.
- R4DS Online Learning Community - #TidyTuesday
- Every week there is a new data set for you to process/analyze as part of the community.
- Additional resources, data sources, and data viz books are provided at the bottom of the GitHub repo.
- A list of R conferences and meetings by Jumping Rivers
- Self explanatory; as of June 26th, 2020, it covers 425 R user groups and events.
- R-Ladies
- Support of minority gender R enthusiasts.
General
- Google’s R Style Guide
- Especially if you’re new to coding, please follow this (or any) style guide. It is extremely important to build good habits from the start. Having legible, readable, and reproducible code is integral to your happiness as a programmer.
- How do I ask a good question? - Stack Overflow
- In order to get help, it’s important to ask questions the right way. Before asking for help online, please review this guide.
- RStudio Cheatsheets
- Cheatsheets created by RStudio and users for common packages and other content.
- Awesome R
- Curated list of R packages and tools. Links to other lists such as Awesome R Shiny.
- Happy Git and GitHub for the userR
- Learn how to connect RStudio to GitHub, and then how to use it effectively.
Data Visualization
- Fundamentals of Data Visualization by Claus O. Wilke
- Discussion of how to make effective data visualizations, with the R source code available on GitHub.
- ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis by Hadley Wickham
- Range of ggplot2 topics, from general concepts to polishing for publications, written by the creator of the package.
Intermediate/Advanced
- Advanced R by Hadley Wickham
- Deeper dive into how R works and other programming skills.
- R packages by Hadley Wickham
- Introduction to R package creation and use.
Software
- R Software
- RStudio
- Note: To enable RStudio, you have to download R first.
Special thanks to the Reddit communities that helped identify these resources!