What is R Programming – A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners in Data Science

If you’re into the world of data science, then you have probably encountered the programming language R. But what exactly is R? And why has it become so popular among the data analysts? 

In this blog, we’ll explore the R programming language, its unique strengths against data analysts and how it can help you to unlock your data analysis skills. Whether you’re a beginner or looking to deepen your knowledge in R language, this guide will give you a solid foundation in R and its role in the data science world.

What is R?

R is a programming language especially designed for statistical computing and data analysis problems. It was developed by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman in 1993 at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Since then, R has become one of the most widely used languages in data science, particularly for data visualization, statistical modeling, and machine learning.

Why is R Popular in Data Science?

The main advantage of R is its ability to handle large datasets, perform complex statistical analyses, and visualize the data in a way that is easy to interpret. It is a powerful tool for researchers, statisticians, and data analysts to make data-driven decisions quickly and efficiently. Let’s look into some of the reasons that R has become popular in data science.

1. It provides various built-in functions and libraries for data analysis, making the advanced process easier.
2. It offers powerful visualization libraries such as ggplot2 that make it easy to create beautiful, customized visualizations to represent the data.
3. R is open source, and its large, active community of users continuously contributes to its development.
4. It is a great fit for handling big data with the help of tools like dplyr and data. table

Now that we have seen the reason for its popularity. Let’s look at how R is used for the data analysis process.

R for Data Analysis

R is widely used in data analysis because of its ability to handle, manipulate and visualize data. You can use R to do the following tasks:

1. Import and clean the data: With the help of functions like read.csv() and packages like tidyverse, you can import the dataset and clean it up.
2. Statistical tests: It has numerous built-in functions such as hypothesis testing, ANOVA, and chi-square tests to perform statistical tests.
3. Visualizations: From basic box plots to complex heatmaps, it is easy to visualize the data and uncover patterns in R.
4. Predictive Models: Using machine learning models from linear regression to advanced techniques like random forest and neural networks can be built easily using R.

Difference between R and Python

You may have a doubt that even Python does the same thing with several built-in functions and packages. So, in this section, we will dive deep into the difference between R and Python.

Getting Started with R

Are you ready to get started with the R language? Before we start, there are a couple of things you need to set up. Let’s look into that.

Install R and RStudio

RStudio is the integrated Development Environment (IDE) for writing and running R code. You can download both R and RStudio from their official Website. Based on your operating system, such as Windows, Mac, or Linux, you can download the latest desktop version of RStudio.

After downloading RStudio, you might need to install it. Open the downloaded file and start installing the IDE. It will automatically install R and set up the environment variables in your system.

Set Up Your R Script

Once the installation has finished. Open RStudio -> create a new script and start coding! Try to write some simple code, like printing a “Hello” message with the `print()` function.

Hurray! You’ve written your first code in the R language. If you want to start your career in data science, check out Guvi’s free e-book on Master the Art of Data Science. It provides a complete guide and roadmap to learn data science from scratch. 

Basic Syntax in R

Let’s look into the basic R syntax to get comfortable with the R language. The concept and idea about the variable, function, and class will be the same for all the languages, only the implementation will be slightly different. If you’ve a decent understanding of Python, then learning R will be a piece of cake for you.

Variables

To define a variable in R, you can use the code below.

Vectors

Use the code below to define vectors in R. Vectors are known as arrays in other languages. 

Functions

Use the code below to implement a function in the R language. Here, sum is the built-in function to sum the vector values. 

Data Frames

Below is the sample code to implement a dataframe in R.

Now that we have seen the basic syntax in R, in the next section, let’s look into some useful libraries and packages in the R language. 

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R Libraries and Packages

R is incredibly powerful because of its libraries and packages. Some of the most popular packages in R include the following. These packages can be installed using the install.packages() function.

• ggplot2: data visualization package
• dplyr: data manipulation package
• tidyr: package for tidying up the data
• caret: for machine learning models
• Shiny: for building interactive web applications 

Where is R programming used?

R is widely used in various industries to solve real-world problems. Some of them include:

1. Healthcare: R is used in healthcare for analyzing medical data, running clinical trials, and predictive modeling.
2. Finance: It helps in analyzing stock market prices, trends, and risk analysis.
3. Academic: R is a favorite tool for academic research due to its statistical power.

Conclusion

R is an incredibly powerful tool and language for data analysis, statistical modeling, and data visualization. Whether you’re working in research, business, finance, or healthcare, learning R will help you to enhance your analytical skills and interpret the data. 

With all these library and package-rich features, R will always stand at the top. As you get comfortable with its syntax and libraries, you will find it to be an indispensable tool in your data science career journey. 

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