A Beginner's Guide to R (Use R) |  | Authors: Alain F. Zuur, Elena N. Ieno, Erik Meesters
Publisher: Springer
Category: Book
List Price: $59.95
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 55258
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 220
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0387938362
Dewey Decimal Number: 519
EAN: 9780387938363
ASIN: 0387938362
Publication Date: July 1, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Based on their extensive experience with teaching R and statistics to applied scientists, the authors provide a beginner's guide to R. To avoid the difficulty of teaching R and statistics at the same time, statistical methods are kept to a minimum. The text covers how to download and install R, import and manage data, elementary plotting, an introduction to functions, advanced plotting, and common beginner mistakes. This book contains everything you need to know to get started with R. “Its biggest advantage is that it aims only to teach R...It organizes R commands very efficiently, with much teaching guidance included. I would describe this book as being handy--it’s the kind of book that you want to keep in your jacket pocket or backpack all the time, ready for use, like a Swiss Army knife.” (Loveday Conquest, University of Washington) “Whilst several books focus on learning statistics in R..., the authors of this book fill a gap in the market by focusing on learning R whilst almost completely avoiding any statistical jargon...The fact that the authors have very extensive experience of teaching R to absolute beginners shines throughout.” (Mark Mainwaring, Lancaster University) “Exactly what is needed...This is great, nice work. I love the ecological/biological examples; they will be an enormous help.” (Andrew J. Tyne, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
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| Customer Reviews:
 A great introduction to a powerful program August 23, 2009
BlueDaisy (Northern US)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
As the previous poster noted, if you are new to R, and especially if you are new to programming, this is the book for you. R is a very powerful statistical language with a steep learning curve if you attempt to master it on your own. For those who are used to black-box statistical programs, R can be intimidating since the user must enter syntax rather than relying on point-and-click programs.
The authors' experience in teaching R to all levels of users shines throughout this informative and friendly handbook. They show how to perform routine statistical tasks in a step-by-step format, describing common mistakes and remedies which alone are worth the price of the book.
I strongly advise that newcomers to R take an afternoon to work systematically through the book rather than treating it like a set of recipes for programming to pick through as needed. This approach will build confidence and competence, and will save considerable time when work is due. I wish I had had this book when I first encountered R, and even after years of use, I found more efficient methods in this book than ones I had picked up along the way. Excellent.
An essential book for new users to R December 11, 2009
G M Smith (Somerset, United Kingdom)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Firstly, I confess a possible lack of objectivity in this review as I have co-authored a couple of other books with the lead author of this book.
For anyone new to R, an occasional user of R, or indeed if you teach R, there seems to a recurring set of questions that need answered to get R to do what you want it to do. Many simple things seem to take a frustratingly large number of hours or even days to resolve. Not because they are difficult to do, just difficult to find out how to do.
Based on many years experience of using and teaching R, the authors have pulled together the answers to the types of questions that most beginners find themselves asking. There is no attempt at teaching statistics in this book, it is strictly a compilation of "how to do things in R". But with the added bonus of passing on many tips on the best ways of doing things, and a useful chapter of common errors that new, and sometimes not so new, users of R often make.
For the beginner, and occasional user who forgets how to do things in between R sessions, this book will be invaluable, and almost certainly save you hours of searching. Additionally, simply leafing through the book is likely to draw your attention to ways of using R, or ways of avoiding problems with R, that you are unlikely to come across when leafing through more comprehensive and wider ranging books on R.
If you are an R beginner and value your blood pressure and your time, this book is well worth the money.
A a great start July 27, 2009
I Teach Typing (Stanford, CA USA)
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
If you want to start (from scratch) to learn to use R for data manipulation and graphics get this book. The authors say, in the forward, that it was designed to support a 3 day (8 hour per day) introduction to the R language without teaching statistics and it does a fabulous job. It covers R data types and data manipulation nearly as well as my favorite book on the topic Data Manipulation with R (Use R) but it also does a good job covering basic plots (all the typical one or two variable plots) out to intermediate graphics (making a lattice with lots of pictures) (a good next step for graphics is Data Analysis and Graphics Using R: An Example-based Approach (Cambridge Series in Statistical and Probabilistic Mathematics)) and also gives a very accessible introduction to applying functions to sets of variables and the R version of looping.
The organization and flow are excellent. Each chapter has many exercises and as you read their are pointers saying to go try the corresponding problems. There is no answer key for the problems but they are so closely tied to the material that should not be a major issue.
The index is okay but not good because there are functions used in the body of the book that are not indexed and it is missing an overall summary index/table that covers all the functions.
If the publisher will clean up the indexing, so that it is easier to return and find the information in the book, it is a solid 5 star product. Another possible complaint is that it is very expensive for a 200 page paperback but the quality of the writing offsets for the bloated price.
 Best intro that I've found; but still pretty obtuse July 27, 2010
A. KEITH (Albuquerque, NM)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am desperately trying to learn R. But there just aren't any good self-teachinig intros to the language. I've tried several but either end up disgusted that they're too disconnected or are just too simplistic and more interested in being cute or clever rather than seriously teaching the language. This one is better; but is still a bit obtuse. Many of the examples don't work or they don't give results that match what is in the book. That is very disappointing and makes learning the language exceptionally difficult. On the other hand, the order and style of material presentation is pretty good and I've learned more than from any other similar introduction.
 Sloppy work May 3, 2010
M. Heinisch (austria)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is frustrating to say the least. It just brushes certain topics, leaving out valuable information - that could have easily been included. For example the topic of passing a dataframe to a sapply or lapply is touched but the why, how, when,... etc are never explained. When reading this or many other sections in this book you cannot help but feel there is a lot of important information regarding these topics you simply still don't know about. Even for a Beginners Guide it leaves out far too much information to be really useful. Some parts might be quite good but the holes in the information this book presents are simply too glaringly huge - if you're looking for a good primer for R, better look somewhere else.
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