R is a programming language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. The R environment provides an integrated suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation and graphical display. R can import and export data in a variety of formats, both open source and proprietary, including plain text and comma-separated values (CSV), Excel spreadsheets (.XLS and .XLSX), files from a variety of statistical packages (including SAS, SPSS, and Stata), and more. For additional information about working with different data formats in R, see R Data Import/Export. To learn more about R, visit the R Project for Statistical Computing.
RStudio is an open source user interface for R, and it also provides access to some packages not available in the basic R environment. To learn more about RStudio, visit the RStudio homepage.
R and RStudio are useful for a wide variety of data manipulation, analysis, and visualization tasks. Because it is open source and uses literate programming (combining content and code), R facilitates research reproducibility. Learn more about using R to conduct research that can be easily recreated, understood, and verified.
Learning about R and RStudio
NIH Library Introduction to R Classes
The NIH Library Data Services team has created an Introduction to R series that is offered periodically, as well as additional R classes on data visualization, project management, version control, scholarly publishing with Quarto, and more. The series is modeled after Data Carpentry, and is designed to teach non-programmers to write modular code and to introduce best practices for using R for data analysis. Please consult the NIH Library Training Calendar for course offerings.
Online Resources
- Data Science Specialization through Coursera
Coursera's Data Science Specialization is a series of 10 free Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs). Taught by biostatisticians from Johns Hopkins University, the series of courses focuses on using R and RStudio for data analysis and visualization. - RStudio Knowledgebase
Documentation, troubleshooting, and FAQs for RStudio. - DataCamp
DataCamp provides a series of free, interactive learning modules on R, R Studio, and data science, from beginner to advanced level training.