Programming Tutorials

Excellent Free Tutorials to Learn R

Last Updated on October 28, 2024

The R language is the de facto standard among statisticians for the development of statistical software, and is widely used for statistical software development and data analysis. R is a modern dialect of S, one of several statistical programming languages designed at Bell Laboratories.

R is much more than a programming language. It’s an interactive suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation, and graphical display. R offers a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinear modelling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, …) and graphical techniques, and is highly extensible. The ability to download and install R packages is a key factor which makes R an excellent language to learn. What else makes R awesome? Here’s a taster.

  • It’s free, open source, and available for every major platform. So anyone can repeat your work whatever platform they run.
  • A huge set of high quality packages for statistical modelling, machine learning, visualization, and importing and manipulating data.
  • Cutting edge tools.
  • A suite of operators for calculations on arrays, in particular matrices.
  • Deep-seated language support for data analysis. This includes features likes missing values, data frames, and subsetting.
  • Powerful tools for communicating your results.
  • Produce publication-quality graphs, including mathematical symbols. Dynamic and interactive graphics are available through additional packages. R packages make it easy to produce HTML or PDF, and create interactive websites with Shiny, a sublime R package.
  • A strong foundation in functional programming. The ideas of functional programming are well suited to solving many of the challenges of data analysis. R provides a powerful and flexible toolkit which allows you to write concise yet descriptive code.
  • RStudio, a powerful integrated development environment.
  • Powerful metaprogramming facilities; a fantastic environment for interactive data analysis.
  • Connects to high-performance programming languages like C, Fortran, and C++.
  • An amazingly vibrant and helpful community.

Packages are the fundamental units of reproducible R code. They include reusable R functions, the documentation that describes how to use them, and sample data. The CRAN package repository hosts over 15,000 packages, and Bioconductor is home to over 1,800 packages.

Here’s our recommended tutorials to learn R. If you’re looking for free R programming books, check here.


1. Introduction to R and RStudio for Data Science by LinuxLinks

This is a crash course in data science designed for the absolute beginner. Get up to speed in 20 minutes. It assumes only basic computer skills and no programming knowledge. If you’re interested in learning about data science, this is a great place to start.

Read the tutorial


2. Cookbook for R by Winston Chang

The goal of the cookbook is to provide solutions to common tasks and problems in analyzing data.

Read the tutorial


3. R Tutorial for Beginners: Learning R Programming by guru99

This is a complete course on R for beginners and covers basics to advance topics like machine learning algorithm, linear regression, time series, statistical inference etc.

Read the tutorial


4. Elementary Statistics with R by R Tutorial

The R solutions are short, self-contained and requires minimal R skill. Most of them are just a few lines in length.

Read the tutorial


5. R Tutorial by Kelly Black

These materials are designed to offer an introduction to the use of R. It is not exhaustive, but is designed to just provide the basics. It has been developed for students who are new to R but have had some basic experience working with computers.

Read the tutorial


6. R Programming Tutorials by thenewboston

A set of videos with good coverage.

Watch the video tutorials


7. 15 Page Tutorial for R by Study Trails

A 15 page example based tutorial that covers the basics of R.

These tutorials are designed for beginners in R, but they can also be used by experienced programmers as a refresher course or as reference.

Read the tutorial


All tutorials in this series:

Free Programming Tutorials
ABAPAdvanced Business Application Programming
AdaALGOL-like programming language, extended from Pascal and others
AgdaDependently typed functional language based on intuitionistic type theory
AliceEducational language with an integrated development environment
ArduinoInexpensive, flexible, open source microcontroller platform
AssemblyAs close to writing machine code without writing in pure hexadecimal
AwkVersatile language designed for pattern scanning and processing
Bash‘Bourne-Again-SHell’ is both a shell and programming language
BASICFamily of general-purpose, high-level programming languages
CGeneral-purpose, procedural, portable, high-level language
C++General-purpose, portable, free-form, multi-paradigm language
C#Combines the power and flexibility of C++ with the simplicity of Visual Basic
ChapelParallel-programming language in development at Cray Inc.
ClojureDialect of the Lisp programming language
ClojureScriptCompiler for Clojure that targets JavaScript
COBOLCommon Business-Oriented Language
CoffeeScriptA very succinct programming language that transcompiles into JavaScript
CoqDependently typed language similar to Agda, Idris, F*, Lean, and others
CrystalGeneral-purpose, concurrent, multi-paradigm, object-oriented language
CSSCSS (Cascading Style Sheets) specifies a web page’s appearance
DGeneral-purpose systems programming language with a C-like syntax
DartClient-optimized programming language for fast apps
DylanMulti-paradigm language, supports functional & object-oriented programming
ECMAScriptBest known as the language embedded in web browsers
EiffelObject-oriented language
ElixirRelatively new functional language that runs on the Erlang virtual machine
ElmFunctional language that compiles to JavaScript
Emacs LispA dialect of the Lisp programming language.
ErlangGeneral-purpose, concurrent, declarative, functional language
F#General purpose, strongly typed, multi-paradigm language. Part of ML
FactorDynamic stack-based language
ForthImperative stack-based programming language
FortranThe first high-level language, using the first compiler
GDScript Godot’s built-in language for scripting and interacting with nodes
GoCompiled, statically typed programming language
GroovyPowerful, optionally typed and dynamic language
HackFor the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM), created as a dialect of PHP
HamlHTML Abstraction Markup Language
HaskellStandardized, general-purpose, polymorphically, statically typed language
HTMLHyperText Markup Language
IconHigh-level, general-purpose language
ImbaFull-stack language that compiles to performant JavaScript
JArray programming language based primarily on APL
JavaGeneral-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, high-level language
JavaScriptInterpreted, prototype-based, scripting language
JuliaHigh-level, high-performance language for technical computing
KotlinStatically typed, general-purpose programming language with type inference
LabVIEWDesigned to enable domain experts to build power systems quickly
LaTeXProfessional document preparation system and document markup language
LessBackwards-compatible language extension for Cascading Style Sheets
LimboDesigned for applications running distributed systems on small computers
LispUnique features - excellent to study programming constructs
LogoDialect of Lisp that features interactivity, modularity, extensibility
LuaDesigned as an embeddable scripting language
MarkdownPlain text formatting syntax designed to be easy-to-read and easy-to-write
MoonScriptDynamic scripting programmer friendly language that compiles into Lua
NimStatically typed compiled systems language with syntax resembling Python
Objective-CGeneral purpose language which is a superset of C
OCamlGeneral-purpose, powerful, high-level language
OctaveHigh-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations
OpenCLOpen Computing Language
PascalImperative and procedural language designed in the late 1960s
PerlHigh-level, general-purpose, interpreted, scripting, dynamic language
PikeInterpreted, general-purpose, high-level, cross-platform, dynamic language
PHPPHP has been at the helm of the web for many years
PonyPony is an actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance language
PostScriptPage description language in electronic and desktop publishing
PrologGeneral purpose, declarative, logic programming language
PureScriptSmall strongly, statically typed language with expressive types
PythonGeneral-purpose, structured, powerful language
QMLHierarchical declarative language for user interface layout with a syntax to JSON
RDe facto standard among statisticians and data analysts
RacketPlatform for programming language design and implementation
RakuMember of the Perl family of programming languages
RoffExtensible text formatting language and a set of programs for printing
RubyGeneral purpose, scripting, structured, flexible, fully object-oriented language
RustIdeal for systems, embedded, and other performance critical code
ScalaModern, object-functional, multi-paradigm, Java-based language
SchemeGeneral-purpose, functional, language descended from Lisp and Algol
ScratchVisual programming language designed for 8-16 year-old children
SolidityObject-oriented, high-level language for implementing smart contracts
SQLAccess and manipulate data held in a relational database management system
Standard MLOne of the two main dialects of the ML language
SwiftPowerful and intuitive general-purpose programming language
TclDynamic language based on concepts of Lisp, C, and Unix shells
TypeScriptStrict syntactical superset of JavaScript, adding optional static typing
VStatically typed compiled language to build maintainable software
ValaObject-oriented language with a self-hosting compiler that generates C code
VHDLVery High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language
VimLPowerful scripting language of the Vim editor
XMLSet of rules for defining semantic tags that describe the structure and meaning
ZigGeneral-purpose programming language and toolchain
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