MIS 650 Grand Canyon University R Programming & Language Discussion

1.

R is rewarding and demanding at the same time. It provides reliable calculations and almost immeasurable data processing capabilities, but requires at least knowledge of the statistical methods used which could be a challenge to me. Other statistics packages have relatively few analysis commands but each of them have many options to control their output. R’s approach is quite the opposite which takes some getting used to. This may be my measure challenges on how to memorize this commands. One of the techniques I have been using to memorize this is by writing down a detailed comment on all my lines of codes. Each time I have to start a lesson I re-run the codes and read the comments. Another challenge, Like most other packages R’s full power is only accessible through programming. However unlike the others, it does not offer a standard GUI to help non-programmers do analyses.

Below are some of the resources I consider very helpful.

(42) R Programming Tutorial – Learn the Basics of Statistical Computing – YouTube

I love how it started with data visualization and presented the unappealing but necessary part on data type and structure afterwards. It really helps those with “codefobia”. The presenter has a very structured way to teach about R from the very first, and even a voice totally comfortable to listen to, for non-natives as well. Great opportunity.

http://cran.uni-muenster.de/doc/contrib/Paradis-rdebuts_en.pdf

The goal of the present document is to give a starting point for people newly interested in R. I chose to emphasize on the understanding of how R works, with the aim of a beginner, rather than expert, use.

discussion response. (2)

As of today, my biggest challenge with learning R has been trying to understand the many functions associated with the language and how they can be used with vectors and other objects. Thus far, my knowledge and use of other programming languages like Java and C# are becoming very useful as I start to dive into R. This background is useful because R’s syntax is based on the object-oriented method which allows it to be a powerful programming language and statistical tool (Naveen, 2021). The following is a list of useful links that I’ve found through my research:

1. The UCLA Statistical Consulting Group includes a thorough and helpful beginner tutorial for R with examples that a student can follow via R Studio: https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/r/seminars/intro
2. The R Project website’s “Getting Help with R” section goes over several ways that students can access the help tools, descriptions, and vignettes associated with packages, functions, and other features of R: https://www.r-project.org/help.html#:~:text=You%20can%20discover%20vignettes%20by,%22survival%22)%20)%20shows%20the
3. Code Academy’s R tutorial is broken down into several chapters that provide useful information and examples for anyone who is starting to learn R. https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-r/modules/r-stats-mean-median-mode/cheatsheet

The three resources listed above have been a good place for me to start learning more about R. They are especially useful because they provide relevant examples that can assist us with completing the assignments for this class.

Another challenge has been understanding the statistical functions, when to use them, and how to interpret results. I found these links useful as I worked to complete the assignment this week, and specifically liked learning that I can a distribution line to the Normal QQ Plot using the qqline() function. Below are the links:

1. http://www.sthda.com/english/wiki/qq-plots-quantile-quantile-plots-r-base-graphs
2. http://www.sthda.com/english/wiki/descriptive-statistics-and-graphics#graphical-display-of-distributions

References

Naveen, N. (2021, August 13). What is R programming? Intellipaat Blog. https://intellipaat.com/blog/tutorial/r-programming/introduction/

discussion 3 response.

R is great software that has a ton of uses. I have had some background in R so one of the challenges that I’m facing right now are just remembering the syntax for it. However, R has some fantastic resources for its many features that make it easy to catch back up. I’ve included the link to their cheat sheet website below (the rstudio link) which you have to check out. These resources have been incredibly beneficial to me in the past and they’ll be a great resource for this class.

I also want to do more with object-oriented programming (OOP) within R. I found a resource that may also prove very beneficial for that as well (the data-flair web page). I’m not quite sure how much OOP we’ll be doing in this class but I definitely believe that it’ll prove helpful to me in the future. Hopefully you find both of these resources helpful as well!

https://www.rstudio.com/resources/cheatsheets/

https://data-flair.training/blogs/object-oriented-programming-in-r/