Learning Objectives for today

What are R and RStudio
Rstudio Customization (Tools->Global Options)
R introduction-1: understanding Data

R Environment

R is a free computer language and environment for data manipulation, statistical computation, simulation and graphic display
The documents of S/S-Plus can be used for R learners.
Go to the CRAN website (https://CRAN.R-project.org) and download it for your Mac or PC. Click on the directory that corresponds to your operating system.

RStudio

RStudio is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for R computer language
It is a much better alternative to R the environment.
Using a web broswer go to (https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download2/) and download and install the version of RStudio that corresponds to your operating system. Again you should accept without changing the default installation options. On a Mac, there is an intermediate step where you need to copy the RStudio icon to the Applications folder.

RStudio consists of four panels:

Editor Window The top-left panel is intended for editing R code and has a convenient mechanism for piping it to the R Console below. You should type directly into the Console panel only when you are doing something experimental or otherwise will not need the R syntax again in the future. But everything that can be done in the Console panel can (and often should) be done in the Editor panel.
Console The bottom-left panel is called the Console and it is where R code is executed. You can type anything at the > prompt, press Enter, and see the result.
Global Environment/Workspace It generally has two tabs: Environment and History.
Output The bottom-right panel contains five panels: Files, Plots, Pakages, Help, and Viewer. The Files tab typically shows the contents of the “working directory”. The working directory is a folder on your hard drive where R(Studio) will both look for files and save text files, images, etc. Basically, everything you need for a project should be included in the working directory or in a folder below the working directory.

The Plots tab shows plots that are generated by R code.

The Packages tab shows what R packages have been installed to your hard drive.

The Help tab displays the documentation for an R function. The paradoxical thing about R is that in order to get help with some R function, you need to know the name of the R function, when often the basic problem is that you do not know or remember the name of the function you are looking for.

The Viewer tab can be used to view local web content.

Space of these four panels

You can resize the four panels by placing the mouse on the edge of one of the panels and dragging to make it smaller or larger. You could also reconfigure their locations and contents, but here we will assume that the four panels have the stock configuration. Each panel also has rectangles in the top right to make the panel minimized or maximized, which may be used to uncover or cover the panel above or below.

Rstudio Panels

RStudio Customization

Rstudio Customization

Introduction to R and RStudio