R commands

One of the easiest things you can do with R is use it as a simple calculator, so it’s a good place to start. For instance, try typing 30, and hitting enter. When you do this, you’ve entered a command, and R will execute that command. What you see on screen now will be this:

Not a lot of surprises in this extract. But there’s a few things worth talking about, even with such a simple example. Firstly, it’s important that you understand how to read the extract. In this example, what I typed was the 10 + 20 part at the top, and the content below is what R produced.

Secondly, it’s important to understand how the output is formatted. When you look at the output on your screen it will probably look like this [1] 30. Obviously, the correct answer to the sum 10 + 20 is 30, and not surprisingly R has printed that out as part of its response. But it’s also printed out this [1] part, which probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to you right now. For now you can think of [1] 30 as if R were saying “the answer to the first question you asked is 30”. That’s not quite the truth, but it’s close enough for now.

Works Cited

1. Navarro, Danielle. Learning statistics with R.