[R] Best Beginner Books?

[peter dalgaard]

It depends quite a bit on where you are coming from. 

If you come from the mathematical side of things, i.e. you're not scared at the thought of multiplying matrices, know a good deal about statistics and have some experience with programming languages, the document by Venables and Smith "An Introduction to R" (http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html) may be the most efficient way to get started. 

My book, originally written for a course that use Altman's book on Medical Statistics at the main tex, is aimed at people who have been (or are being) exposed to the basic set of statistical methods and need to know how to do things in R. 

Yet others (e.g. Matloff) focus on the programming language aspects of R, some specifically target Data Science (whatever that means), etc. So you may need to shop around a little.

-pd

On 02 Oct 2014, at 08:22 , arnaud gaboury <arnaud.gaboury at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 4:54 AM, Jason Eyerly <teamtraders3564 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> A lot of excellent suggestions! Thank you everyone for the input. I’ve purchased via Amazon:
>> 
>> "A Beginner's Guide to R" by Zuur
>> "Data Manipulation with R" by Spector
>> “Introductory Statistics with R.” by Peter Dalgaard
>> 
>> Are there any suggestions as to which order I should read them in when they arrive? For best comprehension, I’m thinking “Introductory Statistics with R” would be the best to start with, and perhaps the beginners guide after that, or vice versa?
>> 
> 
> I would not start with a whole book, but a good short intro (~ 30-40
> pages). Feel free to pick up free publications here:
> https://github.com/gabx/r-project/tree/master/documentation.
> 
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-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com