Important R Basics Questions and Answers

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Here are R FAQS about R Basics, Questions and answers will be updated frequently and on the demand of visitors.

R Basics Questions and Answers

Question: On what Operating Systems does R Language Run?
Answer: R Language can run on Unix, Linux, and Windows Operating System.

Question: On what machine R can Run?
Answer: R is developed for Unix-like, Windows, and Mac families of operating systems. The current version of R Language is configured to run on machines such as CPU-Linux-gnu for i386, amd64, alpha, arm/armel, hppa, ia64, m68k, mips/mipsel, PowerPC, s390 and Sparc CPUs, i386-hurd-gnu, cpu-kfreebsd-gnu for i386 and amd64, PowerPC-apple-darwin, mips-sgi-irix, i386-freebsd, rs6000-ibm-aix and sparc-sun-Solaris.

Question: What is the current version of R?
Answer: The current released version (at the time of this post) of R is 3.2.2. The current version is 3.6.1 (Action of the Toes) released on 2019-07-05.

Question: How and where from R can be obtained?
Answer: Sources, binaries, and documentation of R language can be obtained via the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN).

R Basics Questions and Answers

Question: How to install R on the Windows Operating System?
Answer: The “bin/windows” directory of the CRAN site contains binaries for a base distribution and add-on packages from CRAN to run on Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, etc (32-bit or 64bit versions of Windows) on ix86 and x86_64 chips.

Comprehensive R Archive Network

Question: What is CRAN?
Answer: The CRAN is a “Comprehensive R Archive Network”. CRAN is a collection of sites that carry identical material, consisting of R distribution(s), the contributed extensions, documentation for R, and binaries.

The CRAN master site is https://CRAN.R-project.org at WU (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien) in Austria.

Following are some mirrors from CRAN:
https://cran.wu.ac.at/    (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Austria)
https://cran.ms.unimelb.edu.au/    (University of Melbourne, Australia)
https://cran-r.c3sl.ufpr.br/    (Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil)
https://stat.ethz.ch/CRAN/    (ETH Zürich, Switzerland)
https://mirrors.dotsrc.org/cran/    (dotsrc.org, Aalborg, Denmark)
https://cran.rediris.es/    (Spanish National Research Network, Madrid, Spain)
http://cran.dcc.fc.up.pt/    (RadicalDevelop, Lda, Portugal)
https://www.stats.bris.ac.uk/R/    (University of Bristol, United Kingdom)

For further R Basics Questions and Answers follow the R FAQ link: Hornik, K., (2015). R FAQs, https://CRAN.R-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html.

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R Packages: An Introduction

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The post is about R Packages in the form of Questions and Answers.

Question: What version of R do I run on my computer or laptop?

Answer: To get the information about the version of R, use the following command at the R prompt.

# get a version of R
R.version.string

You will get a result like

[1] "R version 3.2.1 (2015-06-18)"

Note that a package in R language is a collection of objects that R Language can use. A package contains functions, data sets, and documentation (which helps how to use the package) or other objects such as dynamically loaded libraries of already compiled code.

Installing R Packages

Question: How to check what packages are already installed?

Answer: To get a list of installed packages, write “library()” without quotation marks at the prompt. You will see the list of all of the packages installed in the local R directory of your computer system and then it will list all packages installed globally on your computer system.

# list all packages installed
library( )

You would get results like (note that results below are given as an example only, it’s not a complete list)

in library ‘C:/Users/abcd/Documents/R/win-library/3.2’:
combinat     Combinatorics utilities
proftools      Output Processing Tools for R
rgl                3D visualization device system (OpenGL)

Packages in library ‘C:/Program Files/R/R-3.2.1/library’:
KernSmooth      Functions for kernel smoothing for Wand & Jones (1995)
MASS                Support Functions and Datasets for Venables and Ripley’s MASS
Matrix               Sparse and Dense Matrix Classes and Methods
methods           Formal Methods and Classes
mgcv                Mixed GAM Computation Vehicle with Automatic Smoothness Estimation

Following is a very short list of packages installed in the local library.

Packages in library ‘C:/Users/imdad/Documents/R/win-library/3.5’:

abind               Combine Multidimensional Arrays
AlgDesign      Algorithmic Experimental Design
askpass          Safe Password Entry for R, Git, and SSH
assertthat      Easy Pre and Post Assertions
tibble               Simple Data Frames
plyr                  Tools for Splitting, Applying and Combining Data

Available R Packeges in Local and Global Directory

R packages are essentially a combination of reusable code, documentation, and code that extend the power and capabilities of the R programming language. R packages are designed to be easily installed and used. The R packages are a major reason why R is so popular in data science. There are tens of thousands of R packages available on CRAN and other repositories, covering a wide range of tasks, from data manipulation and analysis to visualization and modeling.

For further details on R Packages, see the link Packages in R Language.

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