The R Programming Language: ¿Why you should use it?

In contrast as many Biologist belive (and non-Biologist too), R is not a statistical software, indeed, is a programming language like C++, Java, Python, Fortran and many others. So, as programming language you can create your own functions, packages, loops and variety of options to improve your analyses and researches. So, ¿What is the beauty of R?.

• The basic unit of R, the vector are very easy to declare and no matter how large or short could be, R thinks vectors as a whole, just like human brain do, which makes learning process easier for people with any knowledge on programming. 

• ¡ R is free and open-source !, which mean that anyone can see your code and you can see other codes, modify, or improve. Given that, there is a huge community developing new packages and tools for different kind of studies, and above all, ready to bring help in different groups and blogs. 

• There is about 2000 R-packages, so certainly, what ever you need you will find the proper package, and if you do not find it, you can build it by your self.

Google Trends. Consulted 27/IX/2016

•  Now, if you programmig in another languages, R allows you to communicate with other language with packages like Rpcc for C/C++, rPython for Python or rjava for Java.

•  Always, the user (you) have the control in every analysis and method, in other words, you have the power to do what ever you want in your research.

• Humans are predominantly visual, we do not interpret numbers as we do with images. But, many softwares plot images from the data by default, and rarely we can modify it to make it look pretty, which is a disadvantage. However, with R we can plot several kind of very nice images from our data, and the best, we decide every aspect: Colors, shapes, sizes, fonts, etc.

• As statistics tool, in the last five years is one of the most used tools in research papers. Any test you need, you can do it with R.

Image taken from: http://r4stats.com/articles/popularity/

•  And not only in statistics is a common tool, but different Biology areas are implemented R as a teaching tool. Now you can find in the Web a lot of books with examples and exercises using R, which in my personal opinion, improve and makes learning easier.

• And more awesome yet, other careers such economy, business and even literature are implementing the use of R. 

Here, I exposed just a few, but important reasons about why you should use R, I hope they are enough to convince you. If not, let me tell you, since I began work with R, my time in data mining, analysis and plotting get reduced significatively, do not be afraid about programming, like learning anything new, is hard at the begining, but at the end it will worth it.

¿Do you know another reason for use R?, Let me know in the comment box !

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If you want to learn R language, you begin with this nice course:

Try-R CodeSchool

Then, if you get motivated and want more, check these courses:

R-Programing Coursera

Programming-With-R-For-Data-Science EDX

¿ Do you want to know more about R ?, visit this Websites:

What is R ?

Wikipedia

Install R and Rstudio:

Install R

Rstudio

Blogs and groups:

Stackoverflow

R-bloggers

Quick-R

R-Documentation