Reasons to learn the R Programming Language

Courtney Brown describing why students should learn the R programming language. R is FREE, easy to use, and open source. It is often used to do statistics, but it can also be used for other purposes as well. R has become the primary development language for many statisticians, and undergraduates and graduate students can improve their resume greatly by being able to use R.

Get R here:
http://cran.r-project.org/

My website is:
http://www.courtneybrown.com/

Background images taken by Jeanne Kiritsis and Roberta Kiritsis

Note: The comments in the video relating to Pascal refer to previous corporate support for Pascal that was largely abandoned. There is an evolving "grass roots" version of Pascal called "Free Pascal" that continues development. There is also Object Pascal that has evolved into the Delphi Programming Language.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Courtney
• Brown
• programming
• language
• programing
• statistics
• mathematics
• computer

[GRIFF74]

Typical Academic. No Pascal compiler exists? What is Delphi then?

[RenegadeThinking]

@GRIFF74

I mention this in the sidebar comments for the video. Delphi is an object oriented evolution of early Pascal. My intent is not to downplay any of the many new incarnations of any language, but to point out that R should be reasonably long-lasting in its structure.

[dagda825]

I guess he never heard of Free Pascal. Pascal is alive and well, and I use it as my primary language.

[RenegadeThinking]

@dagda825

Good point. I mention this in the video comments.

[PsycAndrew]

Great Video. Post some R tutorials! :)

[TheGrayIntellectual]

As a wee beginner in R, I am just now coming to the realization that if I want to work with large data sets (according to my friends in IT) I will need to learn some relational database management. Oh my goodness. Mild panic has begun. Please suggest a baby/dummie’s book that would be a good start for me to read.

[TheGrayIntellectual]

@canufi Thankyou.

[canufi]

@TheGrayIntellectual by RAM do you mean memory? databases use a combination of memory and hard drive. it should not be of any concern to you if your database is in the memory in the hard drive, that should be a detail only that concerns the person writing the database software. You should only be concerned about getting data and using that data for your needs, you shouldn't worry about whether it is on your hard disk or in your memory. A good place to start is DbDebunk.com

[TheGrayIntellectual]

@canufi Perhaps you are alluding to the problem (the price you pay for the power of R) of R storing everything as objects, thereby working with large databases require you to seek further RAM. I can’t make a decent comparison of R with “other languages” because it is my first object oriented language. I've only used GUIs in the past. You can read “Importing Data” section in Kabacoff’s R in Action Book pp. 35-41 to get data from other databases into R

[canufi]

@TheGrayIntellectual what about databases? wouldn't it be good to have a language that allowed you to run statistics over data stored in a database? What does the R language do to make using databases easier than other languages? 

[canufi]

@fndmiranda you can also embed ms excel spreadsheets into delphi programs using ActiveX/COM technology, allowing you to take control of excel using a programming language. Not only for delphi, but also visual basic (VB language sucks though).

[canufi]

Turbo Pascal was immensely popular and successful before Delphi. So your claim that you can't use your pascal code any more isn't really valid.. why couldn't you just put it into the turbo pascal integrated development environment and compile it? Even if your code was standard pascal you could convert it to turbopascal pretty easily. After turbo pascal was successful, freepascal then came along, which still runs old turbopascal code in addition to delphi code.

[ZwolfZki]

Can you link to some of the more impressive graphics output of R?

[fndmiranda]

A lot of misleading comments here...

R is a powerful language to do statistical analysis & graphics, not to build web apps or desktop systems.

If you want web apps try Java, .NET, Python, C#, C++, etc.

If you want quick and powerful data analysis stick with R, or sell your house and buy a SAS license.

If you want very simple data analysis, stick with MS Excel.

[mattjones969]

If anyone here can help me with my R language work (polygon characteristics), please reply!!