The Art of R Programming: A Tour of Statistical Software Design

by Norman Matloff

Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593273843

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Book Description

R is the world's most popular language for developing statistical software: Archaeologists use it to track the spread of ancient civilizations, drug companies use it to discover which medications are safe and effective, and actuaries use it to assess financial risks and keep economies running smoothly.

The Art of R Programming takes you on a guided tour of software development with R, from basic types and data structures to advanced topics like closures, recursion, and anonymous functions. No statistical knowledge is required, and your programming skills can range from hobbyist to pro.

Along the way, you'll learn about functional and object-oriented programming, running mathematical simulations, and rearranging complex data into simpler, more useful formats. You'll also learn to:

• Create artful graphs to visualize complex data sets and functions
• Write more efficient code using parallel R and vectorization
• Interface R with C/C++ and Python for increased speed or functionality
• Find new packages for text analysis, image manipulation, and thousands more
• Squash annoying bugs with advanced debugging techniques

Whether you're designing aircraft, forecasting the weather, or you just need to tame your data, The Art of R Programming is your guide to harnessing the power of statistical computing.

About the Author

Norman Matloff, Ph.D., is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis. He is the creator of several popular software packages, as well as a number of widely-used Web tutorials on computer topics. He has written articles for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Forbes Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times, among others, and is also the author, with Peter Jay Salzman, of The Art of Debugging (No Starch Press).

Customer Reviews

I love this book! Finally, a book about R Programming. And, not the ersatz version that we get in the statistics books. Here is an R book devoted exclusively to how to program in R. OK, all that stuff about data structures, that they publish in the R statistics books is good as far as it goes. But, here is a book that is focused on R programming/scripting, and R as a computer language.

OK, I am biased, since I make my living as a software engineer. But, it is refreshing to have a book that is focused on the programming, and not have to dig it out of or read between the lines. Highly recommended, if you need to do any programming in R, write R scripts, automate some R processes, etc.

"The Art of R Programming" by Norman Matloff is an excellent book and probably is the only book you need to learn and master R. Master it as a programmer and not just as an occasional user. I was such a user, using R only for some statistical tests and doing some plots. However, Norman's book completely changed the way I approached R. By teaching it as a programming language rather than a statistical tool, it increased immensely my knowledge on R and making it more useful for my research work. The book covers the fundamentals about R (always with a programmer's view) and guides you to advanced and useful topics such as Parallel R, debugging, interface to other languages, etc. The writing style is very concise and clear. The explanations, advices and examples very good. This book convinced me early on to properly learn R and I am sure it is the best book for that. I highly recommend this book to everyone who needs to use R or wants to add it to their toolbox.