Introductory Statistics with R

Introductory Statistics with R

R is a statistical computer program made available through the Internet under the General Public License (GPL). That is, it is supplied with a license that allows you to use it freely, distribute it, or even sell it, as long as the receiver has the same rights and the source code is freely available. It exists for Microsoft Windows XP or later, for a variety of Unix and Linux platforms, and for Apple Macintosh OS X. R provides an environment in which you can perform statistical analysis and produce graphics. It is actually a complete programming language, although that is only marginally described in this book. Here we content ourselves with learning the elementary concepts and seeing a number of cookbook examples. R is designed in such a way that it is always possible to do further computations on the results of a statistical procedure. Furthermore, the design for graphical presentation of data allows both no-nonsense methods, for example plot(x,y), and the possibility of fine-grained control of the output’s appearance. The fact that R is based on a formal computer language gives it tremendous flexibility. Other systems present simpler interfaces in terms of menus and forms, but often the apparent userfriendliness turns into a hindrance in the longer run. Although elementary statistics is often presented as a collection of fixed procedures, analysis of moderately complex data requires ad hoc statistical model building, which makes the added flexibility of R highly desirable. R owes its name to typical Internet humour. You may be familiar with the programming language C (whose name is a story in itself). Inspired by this, Becker and Chambers chose in the early 1980s to call their newly developed statistical programming language S. This language was further developed into the commercial product S-PLUS, which by the end of the decade was in widespread use among statisticians of all kinds. Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, chose to write a reduced version of S for teaching purposes, and what was more natural than choosing the immediately preceding letter? Ross’ and Robert’s initials may also have played a role. In 1995, Martin Maechler persuaded Ross and Robert to release the source code for R under the GPL. This coincided with the upsurge in Open Source software spurred by the Linux system. R soon turned out to fill a gap for people like me who intended to use Linux for statistical computing but had no statistical package available at the time. A mailing list was set up for the communication of bug reports and discussions of the development of R. - See more at: http://www.aazzhosting.com/books/introductory-statistics-with-r/#sthash.XsVJlsIe.dpuf