b r a y d e n . o r g / Books

This Web

All Webs

brayden.org

Books RSS

Random RSS

Software RSS

Other

Introductory Statistics with R

• Title - Introductory Statistics with R
  • Author - Peter Dalgaard
  • Category - technical
  • Queue status - completed

• Peter Dalgaard

Synopsis

This is an excellent short introduction to R.

R, in case you haven't used it before is a statistics package, the open-source successor to S. It runs on most platforms (Unix/Linux, Mac, Windows), has an integrated graphics package, an interesting programming model, and a huge number of built-in and plug-in functions.

The book opens with a quick but thorough introduction to R. After the preliminaries of installing R and installing the data sets used in the rest of the book, the first chapter covers vectors, lists, matrices, functions, etc. There are very brief sections on R programming, conditional data selection, sorting, and implicit looping. And there is a short section devoted to graphics.

The point of the book, though, is not to teach R, but to teach statistics using R. The remaining chapters cover probability, descriptive statistics, one- and two-sample tests, regression analysis, multivariate analysis of variance, linear models, logistic regression, and survival analysis.

The exposition is clear and concise and aimed at the practitioner rather than the theoretician. The examples are well-chosen and generally well explained. The typography and page layout are excellent.

Each chapter builds on the preceding material, so the book works well as a text either for personal study or, I imagine, in a classroom setting. The exercises at the end of each chapter are well worth doing. I found that even when I followed along with the text, typing R commands as I read the text, I really didn't 'get' most of the concepts until I worked through the exercises.

This book delivers what it promises: an excellent introduction to statistics and a strong introduction to R.