Introduction to R and RStudio

This chapter gives a brief introduction to the R software for first-time R users. We begin by introducing the R software, which is available as base plus packages/libraries from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN), the repository of R. We provide the links for downloading R for Linux, MacOS and Windows, along with a step-by-step procedure to download and install R from CRAN. We then introduce the interface of R and demonstrate executing some R commands from the console's command prompt. We also introduce the script file, for storing R commands for later use and executing R commands from the script file. Next, we introduce RStudio, an integrated development environment for R. We explain the step-by-step procedure to download and install RStudio. We explain the R interface, writing script files in R and creating R Markdown files. Then we proceed to explain packages in R, installing and invoking the packages from CRAN as well as GitHub for use. We then discuss built-in and user-defined functions in R. We also give an introduction to Posit Cloud, an online interface for working with R. We end the chapter with a brief overview of the book.