The R website

www.r-project.org is the website you should visit first. This website has them all you need. Sadly you don't even need to come to my blog anymore once you get there.

• Downloading R

If you are an ordinary person, I am 90% sure you want the software in your hand first. Forget "Always read the instruction first.", and let us just enjoy the happiness of possessing free software.

On the left menu at the main page, there is a link "CRAN". Click it that lead you to all the mirror sites all over the world. Choose one of those countries, then you'll see "download and install R". Three versions of R for Linux, Windows and Mac are available. Next page for Windows, for example, has "base" and "contrib" to choose. Click "base" then you'll get "Download R 2.8.1 for Windows (34 megabytes)" that is 32-bit Window version of R.

The day I got into

In 2007, when I just started my new job, I am introduced to R for the first time, thanks to my boss Marc. Because I knew some of Visual Basic, C++ and Java for programming before, and I used S-plus (GUI of S language) for statistical analysis, I thought I could easily learn them all.

I was wrong. I didn't try hard of course and got lazy, however I did manage to start learning somehow around three quarters of last year by (this is embarrassing) reading books provided by R-project website! Why is it always hard to start a thing? Anyways, the more I dug into the language, the more my senses of programming revived I have forgotten. Yes, I am still learning but I wanted to share the way I plowed with someone who is now trying to learn about biological statistics and population dynamics.

Sometimes one graph is better than several pages of explanation. I love to create lots of graphs as much as I can. If you have a question, don't hesitate.