Intro to R (Part 1)

Keywords

R, open source, programming language

Abstract

At its core, R is an open source programming language for statistical computing. Let’s break this statement down a little bit.

It’s open source. This means that everything about it is free and open to the public. Open source software is in response to proprietary software which are owned by some entity, usually cost money, and have things like their source code hidden from the public. I won’t get into the politics between these two, but one positive aspect of open source stuff is that other people can contribute to it. R is an excellent example of a community-driven effort to make something better: there are thousands of user-submitted add-ons, called “packages” or “libraries” that you can download to enhance your R code. We’ll get to that later.

Document Type

Other

Publication Date

2017-09-04

Permanent URL

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/8828

Language

English

College

Humanities

Department

Linguistics

University Standing at Time of Publication

Assistant Professor

Share

COinS