R for Everyone: Advanced Analytics and Graphics (Addison-Wesley Data and Analytics) 1st Edition

Jared does a GREAT job of laying out a foundation for learning to program in R. His commentary is clearly articulated and the code samples are VERY useful for someone that is digging into the system.He hosts sample data that can be extracted for practice and maintains an Errata page. The functionality of the ggplot2 graphics package provides a lot of options and allows the construction of a layered request that makes for easy changes to graphics.What surprised me the most about the author happened when I emailed him a question. At the time, I was not successful when attempting to process a Join that he covers on p144 of the book. (Turns out that I needed to make a specific adjustment to my system.) Within hours of my email, I received an actionable response (the fix) that included additional recommendations. I have since had the pleasure of several additional and insightful exchanges.When I started in SAS (quite a while ago) I often turned to "The Little SAS Book" for ideas. It looks like Jared Lander and his book "R for Everyone" may be my ticket to progressing in R.This is a definite recommend!

This was probably the hardest book to rate of any I have rated on Amazon.For what it's worth, I am an R user and I like to pick up books on R to see how other people do things. The fact that I was exposed to packages I have never used was a plus and definitely make the book worthwhile.This book is basically 2-distinct books: The first 13-chapters are the basics of R. They are quite good and if you are new to R you will find them extremely useful.Virtually all the remainder of the book is using R for various statistical techniques. This is where I had my problem. If you get this book with the assumption that you will learn statistics at the same time, then you will be disappointed. The problem is that while the book does tell you HOW to do the test, that's about it. There isn't much in terms of explaining what it is you did or how to interpret the results. I suppose if you look at it as a book to show you how to use the various R commands to run a t-test or an ANOVA, then that's OK, but I don't see value if you do something, get a value and not understand what it's for. But, if you are already statistically savvy, then this might not be an issue.One thing I did not like though is the use of ggplot. Now, I fully appreciate that ggplot will in fact generate far better graphics than the core plot routines in R. No question. But, ggplot in itself is a book, and in many cases, I just cut-and-pasted the code into R to see what happens. There wasn't really a whole bunch of explanations as to why you were doing what you were doing. Given that this is more an intro book (given the initial chapters of R that gives me this impression), I would have considered using the core plot routines instead. More work and less attractive I know, but if your audience are people who are new to R, then why not stay with the core routines?

The book is outstanding. I was able to work my way through the book fairly quickly and learn R very well. The author provides many data sets that make it easy to follow along with the instructions.The examples are clear and easy to follow, and they work. Most programming books have multiple errors–I read one programming book that had over 100 errata–this book has zero errata.The writing is very easy to read, and the steps build from the very beginning to advanced principles.I met the author at an R conference, his presentation filled with attendees. He is able to make R accessible to non–programmers both in person and in print, and I am a much better user of R thanks to his work!Highest recommendation for R For Everyone!

For the Kindle edition on the Windows reader neither the + or - signs can be seen nor are they completely correct when a passage is copied to paste into R. The underscore '_' and the period '.' often cannot be differentiated. Often characters are not ordinary ASCII when pasted into R and have to be manually changed. This for a book to used as a desk reference for learning R is not good. It is a shame such a good book in so difficult to use in practice.

I am still a novice in R, though I have used it for a while. I ordered this book because I need a more solid background in R for a major project. This book feels like exactly what I was looking for--like an experienced user sitting beside me helping me along. It is definitely *not* just a rehash of online pdf guides (which can be hard to parse). I am already marking pages that tell me things I never knew but needed to know. And the pacing of information "feels right"--no more than what I need to know, about when I need to know it. Just-released, its time references are as recent as September 2013, and that is important, because the R experience has evolved from something crude but full of possibilities to something much more rich, with an ecosystem of supporting tools. If you are like me, then I think you will really enjoy Jared lander's R for Everyone.

I have developed an interest in data science and had never heard of R. Was taking a data science course on Coursera on R and was just frustrated. Found this book and absolutely love it. Going from not even knowing the language existed to using it was only possible because of this book. My prior programming experience was in Fortran and Basic back in the 60's and 70's. Things have changed a bit since then. I actually write the code from the book mainly to get the syntax correct (and comfortable with it) and use Git to store them all. Hands on experience with a book that has few errors and great examples has worked wonders for me. If you are a newby like me, this is a GREAT book.Carl Sutton, CPA/former Aerospace Engineer