R for Everyone: Advanced Analytics and Graphics (Addison-Wesley Data and Analytics)

The book is outstanding. I was able to work my way through the book fairly quickly and learn R very well. The author provides many data sets that make it easy to follow along with the instructions. The examples are clear and easy to follow, and they work. Most programming books have multiple errors–I read one programming book that had over 100 errata–this book has zero errata. The writing is very easy to read, and the steps build from the very beginning to advanced principles. I met the author at an R conference, his presentation filled with attendees. He is able to make R accessible to non–programmers both in person and in print, and I am a much better user of R thanks to his work! Highest recommendation for R For Everyone!

Probably the most accessible introduction to R there is, but it does have it's flaws. The descriptions of some of the statistical concepts are shaky (especially PDFs), and the material is inconsistent in it's depth. That said, I have recommended it to my team, and I am hopint that a revised, improved edition will come out soon!

Jared does a GREAT job of laying out a foundation for learning to program in R. His commentary is clearly articulated and the code samples are VERY useful for someone that is digging into the system. He hosts sample data that can be extracted for practice and maintains an Errata page. The functionality of the ggplot2 graphics package provides a lot of options and allows the construction of a layered request that makes for easy changes to graphics. What surprised me the most about the author happened when I emailed him a question. At the time, I was not successful when attempting to process a Join that he covers on p144 of the book. (Turns out that I needed to make a specific adjustment to my system.) Within hours of my email, I received an actionable response (the fix) that included additional recommendations. I have since had the pleasure of several additional and insightful exchanges. When I started in SAS (quite a while ago) I often turned to "The Little SAS Book" for ideas. It looks like Jared Lander and his book "R for Everyone" may be my ticket to progressing in R. This is a definite recommend!

I'm only through eleven chapters, and my reaction is mixed. I expected wonderful things because of the terrific reviews i'd read. The first nine chapters were easy to read and went quickly. But the book changed dramatically in chapters 10 and 11. Suddenly, they're using functions in examples without describing what the functions do and without listing all of the parameters of the functions and without explaining why we get the results we get instead of, in one case, the results I expected.

I was taking a Data Mining class and the free PDF book assigned with the course was very technically focused on proving why certain methods work. However, the class was more focused on practical use of R and statistical method use. Since I had used R a little before, I didn't need the first few chapters, but it was a perfect complement otherwise. A very nice walkthrough of the data types used in R with a load of examples to help understand them was a key strength of the book. Another was text manipulation and useful data cleaning information. It also has a reasonable walk through of the more common statistical models used with R. I did find two other nice, free supplements and the three combined (along with stackoverflow) were just what was needed.

I have developed an interest in data science and had never heard of R. Was taking a data science course on Coursera on R and was just frustrated. Found this book and absolutely love it. Going from not even knowing the language existed to using it was only possible because of this book. My prior programming experience was in Fortran and Basic back in the 60's and 70's. Things have changed a bit since then. I actually write the code from the book mainly to get the syntax correct (and comfortable with it) and use Git to store them all. Hands on experience with a book that has few errors and great examples has worked wonders for me. If you are a newby like me, this is a GREAT book. Carl Sutton, CPA/former Aerospace Engineer

This was probably the hardest book to rate of any I have rated on Amazon. For what it's worth, I am an R user and I like to pick up books on R to see how other people do things. The fact that I was exposed to packages I have never used was a plus and definitely make the book worthwhile. This book is basically 2-distinct books: The first 13-chapters are the basics of R. They are quite good and if you are new to R you will find them extremely useful. Virtually all the remainder of the book is using R for various statistical techniques. This is where I had my problem. If you get this book with the assumption that you will learn statistics at the same time, then you will be disappointed. The problem is that while the book does tell you HOW to do the test, that's about it. There isn't much in terms of explaining what it is you did or how to interpret the results. I suppose if you look at it as a book to show you how to use the various R commands to run a t-test or an ANOVA, then that's OK, but I don't see value if you do something, get a value and not understand what it's for. But, if you are already statistically savvy, then this might not be an issue. One thing I did not like though is the use of ggplot. Now, I fully appreciate that ggplot will in fact generate far better graphics than the core plot routines in R. No question. But, ggplot in itself is a book, and in many cases, I just cut-and-pasted the code into R to see what happens. There wasn't really a whole bunch of explanations as to why you were doing what you were doing. Given that this is more an intro book (given the initial chapters of R that gives me this impression), I would have considered using the core plot routines instead. More work and less attractive I know, but if your audience are people who are new to R, then why not stay with the core routines?

El libro de Lander es una muy buena introducción al lenguaje R. Tiene un estilo sencillo y trae muchos ejemplos para poner en práctica. Todos los datos se puede descargar de la red. Realmente es una muy buena introducción a R ya que aborda desde cuestiones simples como la lectura de datos y estadística descriptiva hasta temas mucho más avanzados como la programación en R o cálculos con estadística inferencial. Tengo varios libros de R, pero si solo fuera a comprar un solo libro sin duda sería éste.

Very informative book. Starts with the very basics of R and then takes you deeply into the topics. Great book for the beginners. Better than most of the other Basic R available online.

Excellent book!!!!!

I have read many other books on R including the O'Reilly books and the Art of Programming with R and I really think Jared has hit the sweet spot with this one. Using R can be a rewarding and yet frustrating experience. My background is software engineering and not statistics so my learning approach is probably a bit different from a statistician and this book is well written with great examples. Get this book and enjoy the world of R and data analysis.

Para aquellos que necesiten ir de 0 a experto. Al terminar el libro deberías de ser capaz de realizar tus scripts de R. Aún estando en inglés es sencillo de seguir y muy completo.