One-day Workshop on the R System - 3 March 2008

These notes are intended for anyone considering attendance at the R workshop planned as a preliminary to the Extreme Values workshops on 4-5 March and 11-12 March.

In preparation for the Course

Copy down the R binary (R-2.6.2 or R-2.6.2pat), install it, start up R, and start typing!
Click here to obtain R

Windows users: Click on R binaries | windows | base and follow instructions.

Other systems: Click on whatever is appropriate in place of windows

See also the document Installation of R, of R packages, and editor environments

What should I type?

> 1+1
## This may suggest some other possibilities!
> demo() ## Gives a list of demos that can be tried
> demo(graphics) ## Show off the graphics. Press the ENTER key to display the first graph,
## and to display each successive graph.
> example(plot) ## As before, press the ENTER key to display each new graph.

Packages that should be installed

The packages DAAG, DAAGxtras and Rcmdr should be installed. For use of Rcmdr it is best to install, also, abind, car, effects, lmtest, multcomp, relimp, rgl and RODBC. Ideally, install also ggplot2 (requires also, apart from packages that come with R binaries, proto, reshape, RColorBrewer and colorspace; useful extras are quantreg and SparseM). Other packages to which there may be reference include dichromat and fortunes.

For the 11-12 March advanced EV course, the packages ismev and extRemes should be installed.

A CD or memory stick will however be available at the course from which it will be possible to install, from R-2.6.2 (R-2.6.0 or R-2.6.1 should also be alright), any packages that are lacking.

What next?

Work throuch chapter 1 (optional) and chapters 2 - 3 of the document
http://www.maths.anu.edu.au/~johnm/courses/r/notes/rnotes1-30.pdf

Click here to get the scripts

After that?

Copy down an introductory document, and start working through it. Go to http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/CRAN
and click on Documentation to see some of the possibilities.

Try, perhaps, R for Beginners (Emmanuel Paradis), and see how you go!

Do you have data that you are happy to expose to wider view?

Contact the presenter with the details. Data that have been used for a published paper may be especially suitable.

Links

Web site for R (CRAN = Comprehensive R Archive Network)

John Maindonald's web site

email: john.maindonald AT anu.edu.au