Further R Resources
Overview
This unit gives a few quick pointers to resources that can help you learn R further.
Goals
- Be aware of resources that can help learn R further.
Reading
AI help
One of the tasks at which AI has become very good is writing code. While this can be a danger if you allow it to write code for you that you don’t understand, it can also be a great tool to learn coding. For instance you can ask AI tools to help you write code snippets for specific tasks, and request that they thoroughly document and explain the code they write. You can also give it code that doesn’t work or that you don’t understand and ask it to explain it to you.
The most challenging part about using AI tools for coding is learning how to ask the right question, and being able to assess what the AI returns. To be able to do those tasks well, you still need to understand certain coding concepts and be able to read and evaluate code, even if you are likely going to use AI to help you with a lot of the coding tasks.
Selected learning resources
- The Posit Recipes collection of tutorials cover many coding topics that are relevant for modeling and data science tasks.
- The R Primers collection of tutorials provides a very basic, and well-done introduction to some R coding concepts.
- Ready for R - materials for a basic introductory online R course taught by Ted Laderas.
- Modern R with the tidyverse - online book that provides a very nice introduction to important concepts of R coding with a focus on data analysis.
- Intro to Programming for Analytics - materials for an online course teaching intro to programming with R, taught by John Paul Helveston.
- Efficient R programming contains a lot of good tips and tricks towards writing better code.
- Tidy Modeling with R is a book that describes analysis/modeling using the
tidymodelsset of packages. - R Programming 101 is a YouTube channel with R tutorials that students have found useful.
- YaRrr! The Pirate’s Guide to R: A nice R introduction with a piratey bend
- ‘Use R’ series of books - A long and growing series of books on a lot of different R topics. From beginner to advanced. Many university libraries have a subscription to Springer Online, which allows you to get the books for free.
- Posit Cheatsheets contain useful single-page summaries of many R related topics and packages.
- “Advanced R” by Hadley Wickham for more advanced R coding
- “R packages” by Hadley Wickham and Jennifer Bryan. This (free online) book alone is enough to get a package done. Should definitely be the first (and maybe even only) source to read/use.
- The Task View sorting R packages into categories is often useful
Summary
This unit provided a few pointers to resources that can help you learn R further. Tons of other good material exists. Look around, explore and stick with the ones you like best.
Further Resources
All futher resources are described in the main text above.
Test yourself
How can AI tools be most helpful when you are learning R?
AI is most useful as an explainer and assistant: ask it to clarify code, propose approaches, and then verify the suggestions yourself.
- False
- True
- False
- False
What kind of resource are the “R Primers” mentioned in this unit?
The R Primers are interactive tutorials that walk through foundational R coding topics.
- False
- True
- False
- False
When asking for coding help online, what improves your chances of a useful response?
A concise, reproducible example plus a clear question shows you’ve done your homework and makes it easy for others to help.
- False
- False
- True
- False
Practice
- Spend at least 30 minutes exploring some of the resources mentioned in this unit.
- Go online and find another R resource that looks interesting to you, then explore it.
- Ask an AI tool to write and/or explain a piece of R code to you.