Introduction to R

The goal of these readings is to get you ready to learn how the R statistical programming language can be used to find and tell compelling news stories.

You can either watch the Coursera videos (“R Programming,” Week 1: Getting Started & R Nuts and Bolts, all videos) or you can read pp. 12-45 of R Programming for Data Science.

Both  should take between 1.5 – 3 hours.

If you’re a hands-on learner, you’ll want to complete these exercises, which take maybe 30 minutes to complete.

You might also find it very helpful to make for yourself a “vocab list” with these words and definitions (as they’re used in the context of R):

  • objects
  • attributes
  • vector
  • list
  • matrix
  • factor
  • data frame
  • names
  • subsetting

 

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