About R

This page presents a brief introduction to R for those who never have used R before. It is intended to guide the first steps for getting off to a quick start.

Why R?

R is a free and powerful software environment for statistical computing and graphics. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS. While there are many other common applications that will allow you to manipulate lists of numbers (e.g., spreadsheet programs, matlab, etc), R has an attrative advantage: R has a wide and very active community that supports it.

If you still doubt about the benefits of R, I recommend reading why I should use R written by Barry Grant. If, on the contrary, you are excited about the idea of starting to use R, then go to the oficial R home page and follow the instructions to download and install R into your system. We also encourage you to install RStudio, a useful integrated development environment for R.

Do I need to know R to use ptm?

To get the most out of ptm you should be somewhat familiar with basic R usage, but, of course, you don’t need to master it. If you have never used R before, there are numerous on-line resources that can help you get started using R. For instance, you may visit DataCamp (requires free registration). Also, you may want to have a look at the official R manual. I also find interesting the online version of the book Advanced R.

What’s next