I sometimes get asked how I got started learning R. I thought I would use this post to go through a few books I read along the way which have been highly useful.
The Art of R Programming
The Art of R Programming: A Tour of Statistical Software Design
Another point I like about the book is that it’s good at explaining the primary structures that you need to use to properly program in R – functions, environments, and an introduction to R’s object-oriented system. Understanding these foundations is priceless for wherever you go with R.
The downside is this book doesn’t teach you much pure data science – however, that’s not the text’s intention. Overall, it’s well worth the read.
R Cookbook
If you’re newer to R and want to get introduced to its statistical capabilities, you should check out R Cookbook: Proven Recipes for Data Analysis, Statistics, and Graphics. An updated version of the book came out last year.
This book, like it sounds, is written in a recipe-like format. It presents problems and then provides code solutions, making it really practical. The trade-off is there’s less material on pure R programming, but no one book can cover everything.
The “cookbook” also has a nice chapter on “useful tricks” in R, covering the tictoc package for timing R code, defining binary operators (“%…%”), and specific RStudio tips, such as finding sections of code within a long script.
Advanced R
This book is more for those who have the basics of R covered and are looking to take their R skills up a notch. Like
The Art of R Programming: A Tour of Statistical Software Design, this book is more about how to program in R, rather than doing modeling or statistical analysis. Advanced R also covers useful information on how to debug your code and increase its performance – which is handy regardless of why you’re using R.
One thing I liked about reading Advanced R is that it explains R’s object-oriented system really well. R’s object-oriented (OOP) setup can be a bit confusing at first if you’re used to OOP in other languages.
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Teeter and Long’s R Cookbook is now available online at https://rc2e.com. I still recommend getting a paper copy. The reason is that this is a complete come-up-to-speed R tutorial cleverly disguised as a collection of recipe cards. However, each builds and re-enforces what comes before. This helps whether reading it as a novice or an experienced user. In fact, I’ve been using R for 13 years and read the 500+ pages in two days, with the help of a SEA/LAX roundtrip.