Introduction of R

In this manual for R:

What this manual will learn you

In this manual you learn how you could analyze spreadsheets and other data with the open source statistical software package R. Open source software is free, compatible to modify to your preferences and constantly is in development. In this manual you learn how to analyze in a simple and quick way. With the method that is taught in this manual, you could use advanced methods to analyze spreadsheets. The two open source software packages that are used in this manual are:

•          R;
•          OpenOffice.org Calc.

Background information about R

R is an open source software package and programming language developed by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Auckland in New Sealand. Development. R has its own programming language and an emphasis on the use of statistical functions. With R you can do simple data operations such as calculating averages, but also extended forecast methods. Since R is open source, anyone can modify the functionalities of R to its own preferences. R is constantly growing because more and more developers to connect to offer new applications, mostly free.

Background information about OpenOffice.org Calc

OpenOffice.org Calc is one of the programs contained in the software package of OpenOffice.org. The OpenOffice.org Calc program is similar to Microsoft Excel. OpenOffice.org Calc is also open source software and is free to download. This manual is selected for OpenOffice.org Calc because it offers many possibilities to edit data. It is a cheap (free) alternative to other software packages.

This manual is intended for people who use Microsoft Windows and / or Mac OS X.

Additional information about this tutorial

The original language of this manual is Dutch. However, the example dataset and explanations of actions on the example dataset are explained in English. The print screens of the R console in this tutorial contain Dutch words, this will not affect executions in R since the commands in R are English. During the tutorial it is clearly exaplained which words are in Dutch and how these words should be intepreted and translated in English.

Good luck!

To the first step: Downloading R and OpenOffice.org Calc