25 Recipes for Getting Started with R by Paul Teetor

Summary: start working with R – gently way

Simple, straight to the point, and nicely composed introduction to R. This is the first impression after you go briefly through all the chapters. I am not regular R user – I use R periodically when I have to perform server log analysis. However I remember my first experience with R. It was quite painful to do such simple tasks as loading data from input files, printing loaded data, plotting basic charts not to mention more complex data analysis. Paul guides you through R basics and provides you with gentle introduction to R – powerful tool (or language if you want to be strict) for statistical analysis of data. What you get here is a description of tasks that every beginner will perform – sooner or later. Book guides your through all the steps from the installation process to complex data analysis. After reading this book chapter by chapter you will most probably notice something – it wasn’t that hard to start working with R after all. What I really like in Paul’s approach is that examples are really, really simple and straightforward. No messing around, just plain, clear, simple examples – very often single liners. But don’t think that this is all about. After each solution there is a time for a deeper analysis of the problem. This is the place, where you get detailed explanation of what really happens when you execute given example. Great benefit of the book is that it covers really basic issues related to R programing and it covers them at fairly small number of pages. This way, you get the knowledge, while at the same time you don’t get bored. Must have for R beginners.

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O’Reilly: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781449303235/
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