Hands-On Programming with R: Write Your Own Functions and Simulations

Learn how to program by diving into the R language, and then use your newfound skills to solve practical data science problems. With this book, you’ll learn how to load data, assemble and disassemble data objects, navigate R’s environment system, write your own functions, and use all of R’s programming tools.

RStudio Master Instructor Garrett Grolemund not only teaches you how to program, but also shows you how to get more from R than just visualizing and modeling data. You’ll gain valuable programming skills and support your work as a data scientist at the same time.

• Work hands-on with three practical data analysis projects based on casino games
• Store, retrieve, and change data values in your computer’s memory
• Write programs and simulations that outperform those written by typical R users
• Use R programming tools such as if else statements, for loops, and S3 classes
• Learn how to write lightning-fast vectorized R code
• Take advantage of R’s package system and debugging tools
• Practice and apply R programming concepts as you learn them

Garrett Grolemund is a statistician, teacher and R developer who currently works for RStudio. He sees data analysis as a largely untapped fountain of value for both industry and science. Garrett received his Ph.D at Rice University in Hadley Wickham’s lab, where his research traced the origins of data analysis as a cognitive process and identified how attentional and epistemological concerns guide every data analysis.

Garrett is passionate about helping people avoid the frustration and unnecessary learning he went through while mastering data analysis. Even before he finished his dissertation, he started teaching corporate training in R and data analysis for Revolutions Analytics. He’s taught at Google, eBay, Axciom and many other companies, and is currently developing a training curriculum for RStudio that will make useful know-how even more accessible.

Outside of teaching, Garrett spends time doing clinical trials research, legal research, and financial analysis. He also develops R software, he’s co-authored the lubridate R package--which provides methods to parse, manipulate, and do arithmetic with date-times--and wrote the ggsubplot package, which extends the ggplot2 package.