“RStudio is a new integrated development environment (IDE) for R. RStudio combines an intuitive user interface with powerful coding tools to help you get the most out of R.”
RStudio is an IDE that works with the standard version of R that is freely available from CRAN. Like R, RStudio is available under a free software license. The goal of RStudio is to provide a powerful tool that is easy for beginners to grasp and at the same time offers increased productivity for advanced users.
I chose RStudio for this workshop as I believe it makes R easier to understand and operate, and allows an easier transition from the typical gui environment that most users are used to.fn7 It has features such as syntax highlighting and code completion that aid in the learning of the R language, and the object and history browser allow the user to see and understand how R is working behind the scenes – you can even convince yourself that your data is loaded by clicking on it and seeing a nice spread sheet like view!
There are of course many alternatives if you decide you don’t like RStudio, or just feel like trying something different. A list of gui projects is available here: http://sciviews.org/_rgui. R Commander is apparently very good and will be quite familiar for people who have used SPSS, link here: http://socerv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr
This following section of the workshop will guide you through installation and the basics of setting up of, and working within, an R/RStudio environment. The sections after this will deal mainly with specific R coding and functions, and as such if anything RStudio specific arises I will cover it at the time. I’m hoping that RStudio should come to feel like a natural extension of R and not as two separate programs.
fn7. RStudio however is not a front end gui for R. ↩