Chapter 1 Welcome!

Hi, and welcome to the R Module 1 (AKA STAT 158) course at Colorado State University!

This course is the first of three 1 credit courses intended to introduce the R programming language to those with little or no programming experience.

Through these Modules (courses), we’ll explore how R can be used to do the following:

  1. Perform basic computations and logic, just like any other programming language
  2. Load, clean, analyze, and visualize data
  3. Run scripts
  4. Create reproducible reports so you can explain your work in a narrative form

In addition, you’ll also be exposed to some aspects of the broader R community, including:

  1. R as free, open source software
  2. The free RStudio IDE
  3. Publicly available packages which extend the capability of R
  4. Events and community groups which advocate for the use of R and the support of R users

More detail will be provided in the Course Topics laid out in the next chapter.

1.0.1 How To Navigate This Book

To move quickly to different portions of the book, click on the appropriate chapter or section in the the table of contents on the left. The buttons at the top of the page allow you to show/hide the table of contents, search the book, change font settings, download a pdf or ebook copy of this book, or get hints on various sections of the book. The faint left and right arrows at the sides of each page (or bottom of the page if it’s narrow enough) allow you to step to the next/previous section. Here’s what they look like:
Left and right navigation arrowsLeft and right navigation arrows

Figure 1.1: Left and right navigation arrows

  1. Department of Statistics, Colorado State University, ↩︎

  2. Department of Statistics, Colorado State University, ↩︎