How to Learn R Programming

How to Learn R Programming

Machine learning and data science are dominating the technology world. Data users use tools like Google Sheets, excel sheets, etc., to store and analyze data, however, these tools have some limitations. The best approach to overcome these obstacles is learning the programming language R.

What is R?

 R is a programming language that data scientists, statisticians, researchers, and data analysts use for data analysis. R helps in retrieving, cleaning, analyzing, visualizing and presenting data. R is open-source and free to download. It possesses an extensive catalog of statistical and graphical techniques.

The Stepping Stones

Before you even start the lessons, it is important to find your motivation to learn R. Answer questions like ‘what kind of data you want to work with’, ‘which projects do you enjoy building’ and ‘what kind of problems do you want to solve using R’. This will give you the push to learn R and not quit midway. Once you find your motivation, learn the basic syntax. You can rely on online tutorials to learn R syntax.

4 Tools to Learn R

1. Online Course
2. Online Instructive Videos
3. Blogs
4. Books

Online Courses

There are numerous online courses that you can sign up to learn R. A lot of these courses are free or priced reasonably. Choose the right course, make sure you complete it and you will be on your way to becoming an R master.

Online Instructive Videos

If you are a visual learner, instructive videos would be ideal for you. Turn to YouTube to find some of the best channels to learn the R language.

Blogs

There is a blog on every imaginable topic on the planet. R language is no different. Browse through the internet to find great blogs that cover different topics related to R programming. One of the best blogs you can visit is R-bloggers. They curate content from several R programming related blogs. This means you can find almost everything you need to know about R on this blog itself.

Books

If you are old-school about learning, then books are the way to go. You can learn the foundations through books and implement whatever you learn practically. Some books you can refer are

• A Handbook of programming with R,
• The Art of R Programming,
• Learning RStudio for R Statistical Computing,
• An Introduction To Statistical Learning With Applications in R,
• Practical Data Science with R.

How to Master R

Here are three ways to master the R language:

• Work on structured projects. Apply your learnings, program using R, and work on problems you wish to solve using R. Structured projects will also help in building your portfolio.

• Once you complete a few structured projects, start doing data science projects. Build projects that answer the questions you are interested in. Make sure you start small.

• As your confidence grows with each project, increase the difficulty level of projects. Ensure that your new project is more complex as compared to the previous one.

To Summarize

R is steadily gaining popularity due to its easy-to-use interface, flexibility, and expressive syntax. It is an excellent tool to explore and analyze the data. Learning this powerful statistical language can benefit you in myriad ways.