A Shortrtutorial: Steven M. Holland

A SH O RT R TUTORI AL
Steven M. Holland
Department of Geology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-2501
4 January 2020
Installing R
R is open-source and is freely available for macOS, Linux, and Windows. You can download
compiled versions of R (called binaries, or precompiled binary distributions) by going to the
home page for R (http://www.r-project.org), and following the link to CRAN (the Compre-
hensive R Archive Network). You will be asked to select a mirror; pick one that is geographi-
cally nearby. On the CRAN site, each operating system has a FAQ page and there is also a
more general FAQ. Both are worth reading.
To download R, macOS users should follow the macOS link from the CRAN page and select
the file corresponding to the most recent version of R. This will download a disk image with a
file, which you should double-click to install R. R can be run from the apps R and RStudio,
and from the command line in Terminal or XQuartz.
Linux users should follow the links for their distribution and version of Linux and download
the most recent version of R. There is a read-me file that explains the download and installa-
tion process.
Windows users should follow the link for Windows and then the link for the base package. A
read-me file contains the installation instructions.
For more details, follow the Manuals link on the left side of the R home page. R Installation
and Administration gives detailed instructions for installation on all operating systems.
Although most users will not want to do this, if you have special needs and want to compile
the R source code yourself, you can also download it from the CRAN site.
In addition to R, you should install a good text editor for writing and editing code; do not
used a word processor (like Word) for this. For macOS, BBEdit is an excellent text editor and
is available from Bare Bones Software; Sublime Text and Atom are also good. For Windows,
Notepad++ is highly recommended, and it is free.
Learning R
There are an enormous number of books on R. Several I’ve read are listed below, from the
more basic to the more advanced. The R Book is my favorite, and The Art of R Pro-
gramming is essential if you have a programming background or get serious about pro-
gramming in R.
Statistics : An Introduction using R, by Michael J. Crawley, 2014. John Wiley & Sons,
360 p. ISBN-13: 978-1118941096.
Using R for Introductory Statistics, by John Verzani, 2014. Chapman & Hall/CRC,
518 p. ISBN-13: 978-1466590731.
The R Book, by Michael J. Crawley, 2012. Wiley, 1076 p. ISBN-13: 978-0470973929.
A Short R Tutorial 1
An R and S-Plus® Companion to Multivariate Analysis, by Brian S. Everitt, 2007.
Springer, 221 p. ISBN-13: 978-1852338824.
Data Analysis and Graphics Using R, by John Maindonald, 2010. Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 549 p. ISBN-13: 978-0521762939.
Ecological Models and Data in R, by Benjamin M. Bolker , 2008. Princeton Universi-

ty Press, 408 p. ISBN-13: 978-0691125220.
The Art of R Programming: A Tour of Statistical Software Design, by Norman

Matloff, 2011. No Starch Press, 400 p. ISBN-13: 978-1593273842.
The manuals link on the R home page links to three important guides. The Introduction to R is
highly recommended as a basic source of information on R. R Data Import/Export is useful for
understanding the many ways in which data may be imported into or exported from R. The R
Reference Index is a gigantic pdf (3500 pages!) that comprehensively lists all help files in a stan-
dard R installation. These help files also freely accessible in every installation of R.
Every experienced R user likely has their favorite web sites for R, and these three are mine:
R -bloggers (http://www.r-bloggers.com) is a good news and tutorial site that aggregates

from over 750 contributors. Following its RSS feed is a good way to stay on top of what’s new
and to discover new tips and analyses.
Cookbook for R (http://www.cookbook-r.com) has recipes for working with data. This is a
good source for how to do common operations.
Stack Overflow (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r) is a question and answer site

for programmers. Users post questions, other users post answers, and these get voted up or
down, so you can see what the community regards as the right answer. Stack Overflow is great
for many languages, and the R community that uses it is growing.
Remember when you run into a problem that Google is your friend. So is DuckDuckGo, if
you’re not a fan of all that tracking.
Objects and Functions

When you launch R, you will be greeted with a prompt (>) and a blinking cursor:
>
For every command in this tutorial, I will show the prompt, but you should not type it.
R works with objects, and there are many types. Objects store data, and they have commands
that can operate on them, which depend the type and structure of data that is stored. A single
number or string of text is the simplest object and is known as a scalar. [Note that a scalar in
R is simply a vector of length one; there is no distinct object type for a scalar, although that is
not critical for what follows.]
To give a value to an object use one of the two assignment operators. Although the equals sign
may be more familiar to you now, the arrow (less-than sign, followed by a dash: <-) is more
common, and you should use it.
> x = 3
> x <- 3
Read both of those as “assign the value of 3 to the variable x” or more simply, “assign 3 to x”.
To display the value of any object, type its name at the prompt.
> x
Arithmetic operators follow standard symbols for addition, subtraction, multiplication, divi-
sion, and exponents:
> x <- 3 + 4
> x <- 2 - 9
> x <- 12 * 8
> x <- 16 / 4
> x <- 2 ^ 3
Operators follow the standard order of operations: parentheses/brackets, exponents, multi-

plication and division, addition and subtraction. Within each of these, operations proceed
from left to right.
Comments are always preceded by a pound sign (#), and what follows the pound sign on that
line will not be executed.
> # x <- 2 * 5; everything on this line is a comment

> x <- 2 * 5 # comments can be placed after a statement
Spaces are generally ignored, but include them to make code easier to read. Both of these
lines produce the same result.
> x<-3+7/14
> x <- 3 + 7 / 14
R is case-sensitive, so capitalization matters. This is especially important when calling func-

tions, discussed below.
> x <- 3
> x # correctly displays 3
> X # produces an error, as X doesn’t exist, but x does
Because capitalization matters, you should avoid giving objects names that differ only in their
capitalization, and you should use capitalization consistently. One common pattern is camel-
case, in which the first letter is lower case, but subsequent words are capitalized (for example,
pacificOceanData). Another common pattern is to separate words in an object’s name
with an underscore (pacific_ocean_data). Pick one and be consistent.
You can use the up and down arrows to reuse old commands without retyping them. The up
arrow lets you access progressively older previously typed commands. If you go too far, use
the down arrow to return to more recent commands. These commands can be edited, so the
up and down arrows are good time-savers, even if you don’t need to use exactly the same
command as before.
Functions
R has a rich set of functions, which are called with any arguments in parentheses and which
generally return a value. Functions are also objects. The maximum of two values is calculated
with the max() function:
> max(9, 5)
> max(x, 4) # objects can be arguments to functions
Some functions need no arguments, but the parentheses must still be included, otherwise R
will interpret what you type as the name of a non-function object, like a vector or matrix. For
example, the function objects(), which is used to display all R objects you have created,
does not require any arguments and is called like this:
> objects() # correct way to call the function

> objects # error: this doesn’t call the function
Neglecting the parentheses means that you are asking R to display the value of an object
called objects, which likely doesn’t exist.
Functions usually return a value. If the function is called without an assignment, then the re-
turned value will be displayed on the screen. If an assignment is made, the value will be as-
signed to that object, but not displayed on the screen.
> max(9, 5) # displays the result

> myMax <- max(9, 5) # result is stored, not displayed
Multiple functions can be called in a single line, and functions can be nested, so that the re-
sult of one function can be used as an argument for another function. Nesting functions too
deeply can make the command long, confusing, and hard to debug if something should go
wrong.
> y <- (log(x) + exp(x * cos(x))) / sqrt(-cos(x) / exp(x))
To get help with any function, use the help() function or the ? operator, along with the
name of the function.
> help(max)
> ?max
> ? max
The help pages show useful options for a function, plus background on how the function
works, references to the primary literature, and examples that illustrate how the function
could be used. Use the help pages.
In time, you will write your own functions because they allow you to invoke multiple com-
mands with a single command. To illustrate how a simple function is created and used, con-
sider the pow() function shown below, which raises a base to an exponent. In parentheses
after the word function is a list of parameters to the function, that is, values that must be
input into the function. When you call a function, you supply arguments (values) for these pa-
rameters. The commands the function performs are enclosed in curly braces. Indenting these
statements is not required, but it makes the function easier to read.
> pow <- function(base, exponent) {

result <- baseêxponent
result
}
Arguments can be assigned to a function’s parameters in two ways, by name and by position.
When you assign arguments by name, they can be listed in any order and the function will
give the same result:
> pow(base=3, exponent=2) # returns 9

> pow(exponent=2, base=3) # also returns 9
Assigning arguments by position saves typing by omitting the parameter names, but the ar-
guments must in the correct order.
> pow(3, 2) # returns 3^2, or 9

> pow(2, 3) # returns 2^3, or 8
For pow(), the first position is assumed to hold the first parameter in the function definition
(base) and the second position is assumed to hold the second parameter (exponent).
Calling arguments by position is faster, but calling arguments by name is less prone to errors,
and it makes the code self-explanatory.
Some functions have default values for some parameters. For example, pow() could be writ-
ten as
> pow <- function(base, exponent=2) {

result <- baseêxponent
result
}
which makes the default exponent equal to 2. If you write pow(5), you’ll get 25 in return (5 to
the default exponent of 2). If you want a different exponent, specify the exponent argu-
ment, such as pow(2, 4), which would produce 16 (2 to the fourth power). Refer to a func-
tion’s help page to see which function parameters have default assignments.
Several functions are useful for manipulating objects in R. To show all current objects, use
objects() and ls().
> objects()
> ls() # either works
To remove objects, use remove(). Removing an object is permanent; it cannot be undone.
> remove(someObject)
You can also remove all objects, but since this cannot be undone, be sure that this is what you
want to do. Even if you remove all objects, your command history is preserved, so you could
reconstruct your objects, but this is likely laborious. There is no single command for remov-
ing all objects. To do this, you must combine two commands, the ls() function and the re-
move() function.
> remove(list=ls())
Vectors
Data can be stored in several different types of objects, and a vector is the most common. A
vector is a series of values, which may be numeric or text, where all values have the same type,
such as integers, decimal numbers, complex numbers, characters (strings), and logical (Bool-
ean). Vectors are common data structures, and you will use them frequently. Vectors are creat-
ed most easily with the c() function (c as in concatenate). Short vectors are easily entered this
way, but long ones are more easily imported (see below).
> x <- c(3, 7, -8, 10, 15, -9, 8, 2, -5, 7, 8, 9, -2, -4, -1)
An element of a vector can be retrieved by using an index, which describes its position in the
vector, starting with 1 for the first element. To see the first element of x, type:
> x[1] # returns 3
Multiple consecutive indices can be specified with a colon. For example, to retrieve elements
3 through 10, type
> x[3:10] # returns -8, 10, 15, -9, 8, 2, -5, 7
To retrieve non-consecutive elements, use the c() function. Failing to use c()will cause an
error.
> x[c(1, 3, 5, 7)] # returns 3, -8, 15, 8
These two approaches can be combined in more complex ways. For example, if you wanted
elements 3 through 7, followed by elements 5 through 9, you would type:
> x[c(3:7, 5:9)]

# returns a vector with -8, 10, 15, -9, 8, 15, -9, 8, 2, -5
You can use conditional logic to select elements meeting certain criteria. The logical state-
ment inside the bracket produces a vector of boolean values (TRUE and FALSE), which tell
whether a particular vector element should be returned.
> x[x>0] # all positive values in x

> x[x<=2] # values less than or equal to 2
> x[x==2] # all values equal to 2
> x[x!=2] # all values not equal to 2
> x[x>0 & x<3] # values greater than 0 and less than 3
> x[x>5 | x<1] # values greater than 1 or less than 1
Any Boolean vector can be negated with the ! operator, but this is often overlooked when
reading code, and except for !=, it is often better to use other operators that are more di-
rect.
Vectors can be sorted with the sort() function. Ascending order is the default.
> sort(x)
Sorting can be done in descending order by changing one of the default arguments to de-
creasing = TRUE or by reversing the sorted vector with rev(). There are often multiple
ways to perform an operation in R, and it is best practice to choose the simplest one.
> sort(x, decreasing=TRUE)

> rev(sort(x))
R speeds calculations by using vectorized math. For example, suppose you wanted to multiply
all values in a vector by a constant. If you have programmed before, you might think of doing
this with a loop, in which you step through each value in a vector and multiply it by a con-
stant. Avoid doing this in R, as loops are slow, so much so that they won’t be presented until
near the end of this tutorial). Instead, simply multiply the vector by the constant in one line.
This example multiplies all of the values in a vector by 2.
> x <- c(1, 3, 5, 7, 9)

> y <- 2 * x
Likewise, you can use vector arithmetic on two vectors. For example, given two vectors of the
same length, it is easy to add the first element of the one vector to the second element of the
second vector and so on, producing a third vector of the same length with all of the sums.
> x <- c(1, 3, 5, 7, 9)

> y <- c(2, 2, 2, 4, 4)
> z <- x + y
Factors
Factors are similar to vectors, but they have a fixed number of levels and are ideal for express-
ing categorical variables. For example, if had a series of sites, each representing a habitat type,
store them as a factor rather than as a vector:
> habitats <- factor(c('marsh', 'grassland', 'forest', 'tun-

dra', 'grassland', 'tundra', 'forest', 'marsh', 'grassland'))
Inspecting the habitats object shows that it is stored differently than a vector.
> habitats
[1] marsh grassland forest tundra grassland tundra
[7] forest marsh grassland
Levels: forest grassland marsh tundra
We can use the str() function to display its internal structure:
> str(habitats)
Factor w/ 4 levels "forest","grassland",..: 3 2 1 4 2 4 1 3 2
Although the names are displayed when we show the object, the data are actually saved as
values 1–4, with each value corresponding to a named factor. For example, the first element is
saved as a 3, that is, the third level of the factor (marsh). The second element is saved as a 2,
the second level of the factor (grassland), and so on. This is not only a more compact way of
saving the data, it also allows efficient ways to use these categories, such as using
tapply()and by() to perform calculations on each category, split() to separate the data
by category, and table() to create tables of the data by category.
If needed, a factor can always be converted to a vector:
> y <- as.vector(habitats)
Lists
Lists are another type of data structure, also closely related to vectors. Lists hold a series of
values, like vectors, but the values in a list can be of different types, unlike a vector. For exam-
ple, the first element of a list might be a string giving the name of a locality ('Hueston
Woods'), the second element might be an integer expressing the number of beetle species
there (42), and the third element might be a boolean value stating whether the locality is old-
growth forest (TRUE). Lists are made with the list() function:
> x <- list('Hueston Woods', 42, TRUE)
Lists are commonly produced by statistical functions, such as regressions or ordinations.
To access an element of a list, use double brackets instead of single brackets.
> x[[1]] # returns the first item, ’Hueston Woods'
Elements in a list are often labelled, and when they are, they can be accessed by their name.
For example, when you perform a linear regression, a linear regression lm object is returned,
and it is a list that contains twelve items, including the slope, the intercept, confidence limits,
p values, residuals, etc. If you ran a regression and assigned the result to forestRegres-
sion, you could find the names of all the elements in the forestRegression list with the
names() function.
> names(forestRegression)
One of the elements of the list is called residuals, and you can use dollar-sign notation to ac-
cess it by name:
> forestRegression$residuals
Because residuals is the second element in the list, you could also access it by position with
the double-brackets notation:
> forestRegression[[2]]
Although it often requires more typing, access by name is safer and less error-prone.
In the example above, the residuals object is a vector, so you can access individual ele-
ments of it by adding brackets. For example, you could get the residual for the third data
point in two ways:
> forestRegression$residuals[3] # method 1

> regressionResults[[2]][3] # method 2
Matrices
Another type of R data structure is a matrix, which has multiple rows and columns of values,
all of the same type, like a vector. You can think of a matrix as a collection of vectors, all of
the same type.
Small matrices can be entered easily with the matrix() function, in which you specify the
data as a vector and the number of rows or columns.
> x <- matrix(c(3, 1, 4, 2, 5, 8), nrow=3)
This will generate a matrix of 3 rows and therefore 2 columns, since there are six elements in
the matrix. By default, the matrix is filled by columns, such that column 1 is filled first from
top to bottom, then column 2, etc. Displaying the x matrix gives
[,1] [,2]
[1,] 3 2
[2,] 1 5
[3,] 4 8
The braces along the right and the top give the row and column positions. For example, the
value of 8 could be retrieve with
x[3, 2]
Memorize this order: row, column. This is standard across R.
A matrix can alternatively be filled by rows, with row 1 filled first, from left to right, then row
2, etc., by changing the default argument to be byrow=TRUE:
> x <- matrix(c(3,1,4,2,5,8), nrow=3, byrow=TRUE)
This gives
[,1] [,2]
[1,] 3 1
[2,] 4 2
[3,] 5 8
Large matrices can also be entered this way, but importing them is much easier (see Import-
ing Larger Data Sets below).
Matrices also use vectorized math, greatly speeding computation.
Data Frames
A data frame is like a matrix, but the columns can be of different types. For example, one col-
umn might be locality names (strings), others might be counts of different species of beetles
(integers), and others might be Boolean values that describe properties of the localities, such
as whether it is old-growth forest or on protected land. In this way, vectors are to lists as ma-
trices are to data frames.
Nearly always, columns of a matrix or data frame should be the measured variables, and the
rows should be cases (localities, samples, etc.). If you have a dataset in which these are re-
versed, you can swap columns for rows and vice versa (transpose the matrix), with the t()
function:
> y <- t(x)
Retrieving elements of a data frame is the same as for a matrix, with the first index being the
row and the second being the column.
> y[3, 5] # third row, fifth column
Like lists, columns (variables) in data frames can have names. To find the names of the col-
umns, use the colnames() function.
> colnames(y)
Column names can also be assigned by assigning a vector of names:
> colnames(y) <- c('locality', 'beetle1', 'beetle2',

'beetle3', 'beetle4', 'oldGrowth')
Individual columns can be accessed by name with the $ operator. For example, this will return
the column named beetle1 from the y data frame.
> y$beetle1
Dollar-sign notation will not work for selecting multiple columns. To select multiple columns,
you will need to pass a vector of column names or column numbers.
> y[ , c('beetle1', 'beetle2', 'beetle3', ‘beetle4')]

> y[ , 2:5]
To access individual elements (cases) of such a data vector, add brackets with indices. Both of
the following return the first four values (rows) of beetle1, which is in column 2 of the y
data frame.
> y$beetle1[1:4]
> y[1:4, 2]
If the name of the data frame is long, dollar-sign notation can become cumbersome. To avoid
repeatedly typing the name of the data frame, you can use the attach() function, which
creates copies of all the variables (columns) in the data frame that can be directly accessed. It
is good practice use the detach() function to delete these copies when you are done with
those data.
> attach(y)
> beetle1 # beetle1 can be accessed without $ notation
> detach(y)
> beetle1 # returns an error; detach() destroyed the copy
Because attach() creates copies, changes made to the attached data are not be saved in the
original data frame.
The attach() and detach() commands also work on lists.
A danger in using attach() is that it may mask existing variables with the same name, mak-
ing it unclear which version is being used. attach() is best used when you are working with
a single data frame. If you must use it in more complicated situations, be alert for warnings
about masked variables, and call detach()as soon as possible. There are alternatives to at-
tach(), including the data parameter in some functions (such as regressions) that lets you
access variables of data frame directly, as well as the with() function, another safe alterna-
tive that can be used in many situations.
Sorting a matrix or data frame is more complicated than sorting a vector. It is often best to
store the sorted matrix or data frame in another object in case something is typed wrong.
The following sorts the data frame A by the values in column 3 and stores the result in data
frame B.
> B <- A[order(A[ ,3]), ]
To understand how this complex command or any complex command works, we start at the
innermost set of parentheses and brackets, and work outwards. Starting at the inside,
A[ ,3] returns all rows of column 3 from matrix A. Stepping out one level,
order(A[ ,3]) returns the order of the elements in that column as if they were sorted in
ascending order. In other words, the smallest value in column 3 would have a value of 1, the
next smallest would have a value of 2, and so on. Finally, these values specify the desired order
of the rows in the A matrix, and A[order(A[ ,3]), ] returns all the columns with the
rows in that order.
This technique of taking apart a complex function call is known as unpacking. You should do
this whenever a complex function call returns unexpected results or when you need to under-
stand a complex function call works.
In some cases, your data may be stored in a matrix, but a particular function may require it to
be in a data frame for some function (or vice versa). You can try to coerce it into the correct
type with the functions as.data.frame() and as.matrix().
yDataFrame <- as.data.frame(y)

yMatrix <- as.matrix(yDataFrame)
If you need to find the type of an object, use the class() function.
> class(y) # returns "matrix"

> class(yDataFrame) # returns "data.frame"
> class(yMatrix) # returns "matrix"
Importing Larger Data Sets

For larger data sets, it is easier to enter the data in a spreadsheet (like Excel), check it for er-
rors, and export it into a format you can read into R. The most widely used file formats are
comma-delimited and tab-delimited text. In Excel, choose Save As..., then select “Comma-
separated values (.csv)” or “Tab-delimited text (.txt)”. Both are text-only formats that can be
read by almost any application.
To preserve the readability of your data for many years, always save a copy of your data in a
text-only format. Binary file formats for programs like Excel change over time, and someday
you may not be able to read your old files. This will not happen with plain text files.
To read or write files in R, you need to know the current working directory for R, that is, the
directory in which R will look for files. To find the current working directory, use getwd().
> getwd()
It is easiest to work with R by using a single working directory for any given session, and you
can set this with the setwd() function. This directory will hold most or all of the files you
will need to read, such as data or source code, and it will be where files are saved to by default.
R will stay in this working directory unless you specify a different path to a file.
Paths to files and directories are specified differently in UNIX (macOS, Linux) and Windows
file systems. This is one of the few areas in which R works differently on the two platforms. If
you share code across platforms, any command that accesses the file system will produce an
error, so avoid including paths in your code.
Use the setwd() function to set the working directory of R, with the path as an argument.
Because the path is a string, you must wrap it in quotes, and this is true for any string in R.
Single-quotes and double-quotes both work; just be consistent. Single quotes are preferred
because they are faster to type. Inside the path, use single forward slashes for UNIX systems:
> setwd('/Users/myUserName/Documents/Rdata')
Use double back-slashes for Windows:
> setwd('C:\\Documents and Settings\\myUserName\\Desktop')
Remember to never include calls to setwd() in R code that you share with someone else. In
most cases, that path will not exist on their computer, and it will create a series of errors
when they run your code. Likewise, avoid embedding file paths within other commands.
IMPORTING A VECTOR
Once you’ve set your working directory, you can read a vector into R with the scan() func-
tion. Remember to put your file name in quotes, and include the suffix.
> myData <- scan(file='myDataFile.txt')
This simple version of this command assumes that the cases are on different lines, but if cases
are separated by commas, spaces, tabs, or other such characters, that can be set using the sep
argument for scan(). Likewise, if the variable name is included at the file, or if other infor-
mation is included at the beginning of the file, those lines can be skipped by setting the skip
argument.
IMPORTING A DATA F R A M E
To read a table of values into R and save it as a data frame, use the read.table() function.
This function assumes that your data are in the correct format, with columns corresponding
to variables and rows corresponding to samples. All cells should contain a value; don’t leave
any empty. If a value is missing, enter NA in that cell. Variable names can be as long as you
need them to be. Variable names do not need to be single words, but any blank spaces will be
replaced with a period when you import the data into R.
Of the many options for read.table(), you will routinely pay close attention to three
things, which you can determine by examining the data file in a text editor. First, check to see
if there are column names for the variables, that is, whether a header is present. Second, check
to see if there are row names and what column they are in (if included, they will most com-
monly be in the first column). Third, check to see what separates the columns; tabs or com-
mas are the most common separators, also called delimiters.
For example, suppose that your data table has the names of its variables in its first row (that
is, it has a header), that your samples names are in the first column of the table, and that your
values are separated by commas. Given this, you would import your data as follows:
> myData <- read.table(file='myDataFile.txt', header=TRUE,

row.names=1, sep=',')
If there is no header, leave out the argument for the header parameter, because the default
is that a header will be absent. Likewise, if there are no row names, leave out the argument
for the row.names parameter. If the values are separated by tabs, use sep=‘\t’. There are
other commands like read.csv(), but you should become comfortable opening any table
file with read.table(); it is the Swiss-army knife of file openers.
If additional explanatory lines about the data are included at the beginning of the file, they
can be skipped with the skip argument of read.table().
When you import a data file, it is wise to verify that it was read correctly. Although you could
simply type the name of the object you assigned the data to, this is not recommended as it
can produce voluminous output for large data sets. It is much better to use the head() and
tail() functions to examine the first and last few lines of data.
> head(myData)
> tail(myData)
Generating Numbers
Writing long, regular sequences of numbers is tedious and error-prone. R can generate these
quickly with the seq() function. If the increment (by) isn’t set, it defaults to 1.
> seq(from=1, to=100) # integers from 1 to 100

> seq(from=1, to=100, by=2) # odd numbers from 1 to 100
> seq(from=0, to=100, by=5) # counting by fives
R can easily generate random numbers from many statistical distributions. A few common
examples include runif() for uniform or flat distributions, rnorm() for normal distribu-
tions, and rexp() for exponential distributions. For each, specify the number of random
numbers (n) and one or more parameters that describe the distribution. For example, this
generates 10 random numbers from a uniform distribution that starts at 1 and ends at 6:
> runif(n=10, min=1, max=6)
This creates ten random numbers from a normal distribution with a mean of 5.2 and a stan-
dard deviation of 0.7:
> rnorm(n=10, mean=5.2, sd=0.7)
This produces ten random numbers from an exponential distribution with a rate parameter of
7:
> rexp(n=10, rate=7)
Basic Statistics
R has functions for calculating simple descriptive statistics from a vector of data, such as:
> mean(x) # arithmetic mean

> median(x) # middle value
> length(x) # number of elements in x (sample size)
> range(x) # largest and smallest value
> sd(x) # standard deviation
> var(x) # variance
Many statistical tests are built-in. Some common ones include:
> t.test(x, y) # t-test for equality of means

> var.test(x, y) # F-test for equality of variance
> cor(x, y) # correlation coefficient
> lm(y~x) # least squares regression
> anova(lm(x~y)) # ANOVA (analysis of variance)
> wilcox.test (x, mu=183) # Mann-Whitney U test
> kruskal.test(x~y) # Non-parametric ANOVA
> ks.test(x, y) # Kolmogorov-Smirnov test
In addition to generating random numbers, the built-in statistical distributions of R can be

used to find probabilities or p values, find critical values, or draw probability density func-
tions. These commands are set up consistently, although their parameters may differ. For ex-
ample, these can be performed with the normal distribution through the pnorm(),
qnorm(), and dnorm() functions.
The pnorm() function will find the area under a standard normal curve, starting from the
left tail, and in the example below, going to a value of 1.96. Note that 1 minus this value would
correspond to the p value for a Z-test, where Z=1.96:
> pnorm(q=1.96)
The qnorm() function can find the critical value for a given probability. For example, in a
two-tailed test at a significance level of 0.05, the following gives the critical value on the right
tail.
> qnorm(p=0.975)
Last, the dnorm() function gives the density or height of the distribution at a particular val-
ue (at 1.5 below). By doing this over all values, you could plot the shape of the distribution.
> dnorm(x=1.5)
Other distributions, such as the uniform, exponential, and binomial distributions follow a
similar syntax, with r corresponding to a random number, p for probability, q for critical val-
ue, and d for density (the height of function at a particular value).
> rbinom(n=10, size=15, prob=0.1) # binomial distribution

> pexp(q=7.2) # exponential distribution
> qunif(p=0.95) # uniform distribution
One of the great strengths of R is the incredibly large number of available statistical analyses.
Many are built into the base package of R, and an ever-growing number of them are freely
available in user-contributed packages. There’s a good chance that if you need to do an analy-
sis, it is already available in R.
Efficient computation
R’s vectorized math eliminates the need for looping through vectors and matrices to perform
many calculations. Such vectorized calculations are commonly orders of magnitude faster
than using loops.
Another set of tools for efficient computation are the apply() family of functions. The
most basic of these is apply(), which is used when you want to perform a function on every
row or every column of a matrix or data frame and get the results as a vector. For example,
the following calculates the median for every column of the matrix and returns a vector with
those medians.
medians <- apply(x, MARGIN=2, FUN=median)
Set MARGIN to 1 to calculate the median for every row instead. The easy way to remember
whether to use 1 or 2 is to think of how rows and columns are specified for matrices and data
frames: it is [row, column], so rows are 1, and columns are 2. The argument to FUN is the name
of the function to be applied, and it could be a function that you create.
The functions sapply() and lapply() are similar, but are used when a function needs to
be applied to all elements of a vector or a list. lapply() returns a list, and sapply() re-
turns a vector or matrix. One possible use of both would be to have a series of similar data
sets stored as elements of a list, then call lapply() or sapply() once to perform some
function on each of the data sets. This would be simpler than looping through the list and
performing the calculations separately on each data set, and far superior to storing the data
sets as separate objects and performing the calculations separately on each object. By creating
your own function as a wrapper around other functions, you could perform a complex series
of analyses, including making and saving plots for each data set, all in one command.
Plots
Another strength of R is the quality of its plotting routines. Many types of plots are available,
and complex plots can be produced. R’s plots are far superior to those made in spreadsheets
like Excel.
When calling an R plotting function, the plot will automatically be generated in the active
plotting window, if one already exists. If no plot window exists, a new one will be created with
the default settings. Use dev.new() to create a new plot window, as this command will work
on any platform. Avoid using the platform-specific ways of creating new plot windows, such
as quartz()for macOS, X11() for Linux, and windows() for Windows, because these will
generate errors if your code is run on a different platform.
The height and width in inches of a plot window can be specified, or they can be left off for
the default window.
> dev.new(height=7, width=12) # custom size, in inches

> dev.new() # default size
HISTOGRAMS
Histograms or frequency distributions are generated with the hist() function, which can be
controlled in various ways. Calling hist() with no additional arguments generates a default
histogram.
> hist(x)
Histograms can be customized by changing the number of bars or divisions with the breaks
parameter. Oddly for R, this is only a suggestion that may not be honored.
> hist(x, breaks=20)
The divisions in the histogram can be forced by specifying their locations as a vector.
> divisions <- c(-2.5, -2, -1, 0, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5)

> hist(x, breaks=divisions)
S C AT T E R P L O T S
Scatterplots (x-y plots) are generated with the plot() function. The first argument corre-
sponds to the horizontal axis, and the second is shown on the vertical axis.
> plot(x, y)
Note that x and y are used here only for brevity; you would use the names of your objects.
For example, this would plot beetle abundance vs. the density of vegetation, that is, density of
vegetation on the x-axis and beetle abundance on the y-axis:
> plot(vegetationDensity, beetleAbundance)
Labels for the x and y axes can be set with the xlab and ylab parameters, and the plot title
can be set with the main parameter. Remember to put strings in quotes. Throughout R, both
single quotes or double quotes can be used, but pick one type and be consistent.
> plot(x, y, main='Iron contamination at mine site',

xlab='pH', ylab='Fe content')
The pch parameter can be set in plot() to specify a particular type of symbol. The value of
16 is a filled circle, an easily visible symbol that you should use.
> plot(x, y, pch=16)
Twenty-five plotting symbols are available in pch:
By changing the argument to type, you can control whether lines or points are plotted.
> plot(x, y, type='p') # points only

> plot(x, y, type='l') # connecting lines only, no points
> plot(x, y, type='b') # both points and lines
> plot(x, y, type='n') # no points, only axes and labels
Symbol colors can be set with the col parameter. To see the full list of 657 named colors in R,
use the colors() function. Colors can also be specified by RGB (red-green-blue) value, if
you are familiar with creating colors for web pages.
> plot(x, y, pch=16, col='green') # small green filled circles

> colors() # lists all named colors
> plot(x, y, col='#00CCFF') # 00CCFF is pale blue
Equations and special symbols can be used in figure labels and as text added to figures. See
the help page for plotmath() for more details. The function text() is used for placing
additional text onto a figure, expression() creates an object of type “expression”, and
paste() is used to concatenate items. The help pages for these functions are useful for see-
ing the basic ways for combining these useful functions. The first example puts the square
root of x as the y-axis label, and the second example shows the standard symbol for the oxy-
gen isotope ratio on the y-axis.
> plot(x, y, ylab=expression(paste(sqrt(x))))
> plot(x, y, ylab=expression(paste(delta^18, 'O')))
Special symbols can also be added using Unicode symbols in expression() and paste().
For example, to create a label with a per-mil symbol, such as 𝛿13C (‰ PDB), use the Unicode
character 2030; all Unicode character numbers must be preceded with \U. Symbols for thou-
sands of other characters can be found at unicode.org.
expression(paste(delta^13, 'C (\U2030 PDB)'))
ADDING TO PLOTS
Text annotations can be added with the text() function, where the x and y arguments de-
scribe the position of the annotation, and labels specifies what text will be added. The x
and y coordinates are identical to those used for placing points on the plot.
> text(x=10, y=2, labels=expression(sqrt(x)))
Lines can be added to a plot with the abline() function. You can make horizontal and ver-
tical lines, as well as lines with a specified slope and intercept.
> abline(h=5) # horizontal line at y=5

> abline(v=10) # vertical line at x=10
> abline(a=intercept, b=slope) # line with slope and intercept
> abline(lm(y~x)) # fitted regression line
Shapes can also be added to the plot, and these can be customized with particular line types
(dashed, dotted, etc.), colors of lines, and colors of fills. See lty in par() for customizing
line types. Study the help page for par(), because it describes the many ways that plots can
be customized.
The rect() function draws a box with the coordinates of the left, bottom, right, and top
edges.
> rect(xleft=2, ybottom=5, xright=3, ytop=7)
The arrows() function draws an arrow, with the first two parameters specifying the x and y
coordinate of the origin of the line, and the third and fourth parameters specifying the coor-
dinates of the arrowhead tip.
> arrows(x0=1, y0=1, x1=3, y1=4)
The segments() function is identical to the arrows() function, except that no arrow-
head is drawn.
> segments(x0=1, y0=1, x1=3, y1=4)
Similarly, lines connecting data points can be added with lines(), and polygons can be
added with and polygon(). A box can be drawn around the entire plot with box().
BUILDING A COMPLEX PLOT
Complex plots are typically built in stages, with groups of points added sequentially, and with
custom axes, text, and graphic annotations added separately. To build a plot in stages, set
type='n' to prevent data points from being plotted, and set axes=FALSE to prevent the
axes from being drawn. Specify the values to be plotted along the x and y axes as the first two
arguments.
> plot(x, y, type='n', axes=FALSE)
Points can be added to the current plot with the points() function. Only those points that
are visible within the current limits of the axes will be shown. The limits of the axes are based
on the values used in the data supplied to the plot() function.
> points(x, y)
Axes can be added individually with the axis() function.
> axis(1, at=seq(-1.0, 2.0, by=0.5), labels=c('-1.0', '-0.5',

'0.0', '0.5', '1.0', '1.5', '2.0'))
The initial argument specifies the axis to be drawn, with 1 indicating the x axis and 2 indicat-
ing the y-axis. The at parameter specifies where the tick marks should be drawn, and the
labels parameter specifies the label to be displayed next to each tick mark. Note that the
values given to labels are in quotes, as they are strings.
Here is an example of building a complex plot in parts. The commands that are shown were
preceded by a good bit of experimentation (not shown) with different parts of the plot to de-
termine the order in which these commands would be given. The data are read in, and at-
tach() is used to make the variables accessible without dollar-sign notation.
> waves <- read.table(file='waves2.txt', header=TRUE, sep=',')

> attach(waves)
Plotting begins by making a window with an aspect ratio appropriate for the data being plot-
ted. This is a time series, so we would like the plot to be relatively wide to emphasize the
changes over time.
> dev.new(height=4, width=10)
Because this is a scatterplot, the basic plot is built with the plot() command, specifying the
x and y data as the first two arguments, the titles, the axis labels, and the limits of the y data
range (ylim). The type is set to n, because the data will be added subsequently.
> plot(juliandate, SwH, main='Station 46042 - Monterey - 27 NM

West of Monterey Bay, California', xlab='',
ylab='Significant Wave Height (m)', axes=FALSE,
type='n', ylim=c(0, 6))
A light gray rectangle is added to emphasize a particular portion of the data. This is added
first, so that the data will be added on top of the rectangle. If the data were drawn in the
plot() command, this rectangle would cover the data. The gray() command is used to set
the color to a shade of gray; with 0.0 being black and 1.0 being white.
> rect(12, 0, 18, 6, col=gray(0.9), border=gray(0.9))
Two lines are added to emphasize divisions of the data along the x-axis. Note that a vector of
two values is passed as the v argument, simplere than drawing each line with a separate call to
abline().
> abline(v=c(1, 32), col=gray(0.5))
Because there are so many data points, the data will be added as a series of lines (type='l')
that connect individual values, rather than showing a symbol for each data point. Note that
the first two arguments (juliandate and SwH) are the x and y values of the data and that
they match those in the plot() call.
> points(juliandate, SwH, type='l')
The x-axis is built in two stages. Closely spaced short ticks are added first, with tcl specify-
ing the tick length.
> axis(1, at=seq(0, 46, by=1), labels=FALSE, tcl=-0.3)
Widely spaced longer ticks are added next, and these are labelled:
> axis(1, at=seq(0, 45, by=5), labels=c('30 Nov',

'5 Dec', '10', '15', '20', '25', '30', '4 Jan', '9', '14'))
Likewise, the y-axis is built in two stages, beginning with closely spaced short ticks:
> axis(2, at=seq(0, 6, by=0.25), labels=FALSE, tcl=-0.3)
These are followed with widely spaced long ticks with labels:
> axis(2, at=seq(0, 6, by=1), labels=

c('0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6'), las=1)
This is the final plot. The advantage to making the plot this way, instead of making a simple
plot and adding to it in a program like Illustrator, is that if you make a mistake, you can fix-it,
re-run all the commands and have your final plot, instead of fixing it and going back to Illus-
trator to make the repeat the changes.
Station 46042 − Monterey − 27 NM West of Monterey Bay, California
Significant Wave Height (m)

5
4
3
2
1
0
30 Nov 5 Dec 10 15 20 25 30 4 Jan 9 14
M U LT I P L E PLOTS ON A PAGE
Multiple plots can be drawn on the same page by using the par() function and setting the
argument to mfrow. Each successive call to plot() will fill the panel from left to right, or
from the top to the bottom, starting in the upper left corner.
> par(mfrow=(c(3, 2)))
This example will produce a page with areas for six plots in 3 rows and 2 columns. Each plot is
added subsequently. Note that once one plot is finished and another plot is started, the first
plot can no longer be modified.
Saving and Exporting Results
COMMANDS
From the R console window, you can copy and paste the entire R session into a text file. This
will save a record of your commands and their displayed results. This is an easy and simple
way to save your work. Making a habit of this allows you to replicate your work, to build on it
subsequently, and to apply your analyses to other data sets.
You can edit this text file so that it consists of just the commands you need. First, delete all
the commands and their output that produced results you don’t want to keep. Next, delete all
lines of results, leaving only lines of commands. Last, delete the > prompts at the beginning
of each line, and any + marks at the beginnings of lines. If you copy and paste this code into a
new R session, it should run without errors or warnings. If you get errors or warnings, edit the
code and repeat this process until it runs clean. Save this file for a permanent record of your
analysis.
PLOTS
On macOS, graphics produced in R can be saved as pdf files by selecting the window contain-
ing the plot, and choosing Save or Save As from the File menu. In Windows, graphics can be
saved this way to metafile, postscript, pdf, png, bmp, and jpeg formats. The pdf format is rec-
ommended because it can be edited in Adobe Illustrator. Raster (bitmap) formats such as png,
bmp, and jpeg should be avoided because they cannot be edited and because they often suffer
from compression artifacts that can make them look fuzzy.
Graphics can also be built and saved to a file from the command line. Use the pdf() func-
tion to open a pdf file, just as you would open a plotting window with dev.new(). Run all of
your plotting commands, followed by dev.off() to close the pdf file. Note that your plot
will not be displayed while you do this, although it is being written to a file.
> pdf(file='myPlot.pdf', height=7, width=7)

> plot(x, y)
> # ... all other plotting commands
> dev.off()
A typical strategy is to first develop a plot onscreen to refine the order of the plot commands.
Once these are established, then open a pdf file with pdf(), rerun all of the plotting com-
mands, and close the pdf file with dev.off().
OBJECTS
Any objects generated in R, such as functions, vectors, lists, matrices, data frames, etc. can be
saved to a file by using the command save.image(). Although this will not save any graph-
ics or the command history, it is useful for saving the objects produced by your analyses so
they will not have to be regenerated in future R sessions. I recommend deleting unnecessary
objects before saving the image, particularly temporary or test objects generated when you
were experimenting with code. If your work involves long-running computations to build an
object, use save.image() so that it you don’t have to re-run those analyses the next time
you work.
> save.image(file = 'myResults.RData')
When you resume your work, reload your objects with load(), allowing you to continue
your analyses where you left off.
> load(file = 'myResults.RData')
Programming in R
If you have previous programming experience, get a copy of The Art of R Programming; it
will save you much time. The most important programming advice I can give is to avoid
loops, especially nested loops, which can dramatically slow your calculations.
Even so, some problems require loops.
R’s for loop is a generalized loop like the for loop in C or the do loop in FORTRAN. If you
have programmed before, the syntax is intuitive and this will likely be the most common loop
that you use. Note the use of curly braces if there is more than one statement inside the loop.
There are various styles as to where the curly braces may be placed to help readability of the
code, but their placement does not affect the execution. Indenting the code inside the loop
helps to make the contents of the loop more apparent. Although indenting isn’t required, it is
good form to do it.
Here is an example of calculating variance as you might in C or Fortran, that is, with loops
> x <- rnorm(10000000) # simulating a very large data set
> sum <- 0

> for (i in 1:length(x)) sum <- sum + x[i]
> mean <- sum/length(x) # mean() would be faster
> sumsquares <- 0
> for (i in 1:length(x)) {
sumsquares <- sumsquares + (x[i]-mean)^2
}
> variance <- sumsquares / (length(x)-1)
On a test computer, this ran in 16.3 seconds. When vectorized math was used instead of
loops,
> variance <- sum((x-mean)^2)/(length(x)-1)
it ran in a mere 0.23 seconds, a dramatic improvement (that is, 70 times faster). Using the
built-in var() function, which has additional optimizations, it took only 0.082 seconds (al-
most 200 times faster). If you test these times, you will see a similar speed improvement, even
though your run times will differ.
R has other typical flow-control statements, including if and if-else branching, while,
repeat, and for loops, break statements, and so on.
The if test will let you run one or more statements if some condition is true. If there are
multiple statements, enclose them in curly braces.
> if (x < 3) y <- a + b
There is if-else test can let you act on a variety of conditions. Enclose the code for each
condition in curly braces.
> if (x < 3) {
y <- a + b
z <- sqrt(x)
} else {
y <- a - b
z <- log(a + b)
}
The while loop will execute as long as the condition is true.
> while(x >= 0) {some expressions}
Note that if this condition never becomes false, this will generate an infinite loop.
TIMING YOUR CODE

Critical to optimizing your code is timing it. To time your code, add this line before the code
you wish to measure
startTime <- Sys.time()
and add these two lines after it
endTime <- Sys.time()

endTime - startTime
Copy these commands with your code inside, and paste it at the R prompt in one step. When
your code executes, it will report how long it took.
Always measure your code before you optimize it to understand the effects of your optimiza-
tions. In some cases, code that seems like it ought to be faster might not be, and I have found
cases (rarely) where a loop was faster than the alternative.
Customizing R
PACKAGES
A great advantage to the open-source nature of R is that users have contributed an astonish-
ing number of packages for solving a vast array of data analysis problems. For example, there
are packages specifically directed to non-parametric statistics, signal processing, and ecologi-
cal analyses. Using these packages requires two steps.
First, they must be installed on your system, and this is a one-time step. Most packages can be
installed from the R site: http://CRAN.R-project.org/. On macOS, packages can be installed
through the package installer under the Packages & Data menu. To check which packages
have been installed and are available to be loaded, use the library() function.
> library()
Second, once a package is installed, it must be loaded by calling the library() function
with the name of the library as an argument. The library is an object, not a string, so do not
enclose its name in quotes. For example, this is how you would load the vegan package, a use-
ful package for ecological analyses.
> library(vegan)
A library must be loaded before any R session in which you would like to use its functions.
Be aware that the correctness of code in these packages may not have been tested. Use trust-
ed packages rather than obscure ones, and verify your results.
FUNCTION FILES
As you become familiar with R, you will write your own functions. To have easy access to
these, save your functions to a text file. These can be loaded into an R session with the
source() function.
> source('myfunctions.r')
I usually create a source file for each project, and source() lets me easily load all the func-
tions I need in one step.
If you find yourself commonly typing the same commands at the beginning or the end of
every R session, you can set R up to automatically execute those commands whenever it starts
or quits by editing your .First() and .Last() functions. Common commands to place in
your .First() function include loading any commonly used libraries or data sets, setting
the working directory, setting preferred graphics arguments, and loading any files of R func-
tions. Here is an example of a .First() function:
.First <- function() {

library(utils)
library(grDevices)
library(graphics)
library(stats)
library(vegan)
library(MASS)
library(cluster)
setwd('/Users/myUserName/Documents/Rdata')
source('myfunctions.r')
}
This function loads a series of libraries that one might need for analyses, then sets the work-
ing directory, then loads a set of functions written by the user. By putting all of this into
the .First() function, you can save yourself typing this every time you start R.
On macOS and other UNIX/LINUX systems, the .First() and .Last() functions are
stored in a file called .Rprofile, which is an invisible file located at the root level of a user's
home directory (for example, /Users/username/). On Windows, these functions are stored in
Rprofile.site, which is kept in the C:\Program Files\R\R-n.n.n\etc directory. If the .Rprofile or
Rprofile.site file doesn’t exist on your system, you will need to create one as a plain text file
using a text editor. On macOS, Linux, and other UNIX-based systems, be sure to include the
period at the beginning of the file name.

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A SH O RT R TUTORI AL

The R Book, by Michael J. Crawley, 2012. Wiley, 1076 p. ISBN-13: 978-0470973929.

Ecological Models and Data in R, by Benjamin M. Bolker , 2008. Princeton Universi-

The Art of R Programming: A Tour of Statistical Software Design, by Norman

R -bloggers (http://www.r-bloggers.com) is a good news and tutorial site that aggregates

Stack Overflow (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r) is a question and answer site

Objects and Functions

Operators follow the standard order of operations: parentheses/brackets, exponents, multi-

> # x <- 2 * 5; everything on this line is a comment

R is case-sensitive, so capitalization matters. This is especially important when calling func-

> objects() # correct way to call the function

> max(9, 5) # displays the result

> y <- (log(x) + exp(x * cos(x))) / sqrt(-cos(x) / exp(x))

> pow <- function(base, exponent) {

> pow(base=3, exponent=2) # returns 9

> pow(3, 2) # returns 3^2, or 9

> pow <- function(base, exponent=2) {

To remove objects, use remove(). Removing an object is permanent; it cannot be undone.

> x[1] # returns 3

> x[3:10] # returns -8, 10, 15, -9, 8, 2, -5, 7

> x[c(1, 3, 5, 7)] # returns 3, -8, 15, 8

> x[c(3:7, 5:9)]

> x[x>0] # all positive values in x

> sort(x, decreasing=TRUE)

> x <- c(1, 3, 5, 7, 9)

> x <- c(1, 3, 5, 7, 9)

> habitats <- factor(c('marsh', 'grassland', 'forest', 'tun-

We can use the str() function to display its internal structure:

If needed, a factor can always be converted to a vector:

> y <- as.vector(habitats)

> x <- list('Hueston Woods', 42, TRUE)

Lists are commonly produced by statistical functions, such as regressions or ordinations.

To access an element of a list, use double brackets instead of single brackets.

> x[[1]] # returns the first item, ’Hueston Woods'

> forestRegression$residuals[3] # method 1

> x <- matrix(c(3, 1, 4, 2, 5, 8), nrow=3)

Memorize this order: row, column. This is standard across R.

> x <- matrix(c(3,1,4,2,5,8), nrow=3, byrow=TRUE)

Matrices also use vectorized math, greatly speeding computation.

> y <- t(x)

> y[3, 5] # third row, fifth column

> colnames(y) <- c('locality', 'beetle1', 'beetle2',

> y[ , c('beetle1', 'beetle2', 'beetle3', ‘beetle4')]

The attach() and detach() commands also work on lists.

> B <- A[order(A[ ,3]), ]

yDataFrame <- as.data.frame(y)

> class(y) # returns "matrix"

Importing Larger Data Sets

Use double back-slashes for Windows:

> setwd('C:\\Documents and Settings\\myUserName\\Desktop')

> myData <- scan(file='myDataFile.txt')

> myData <- read.table(file='myDataFile.txt', header=TRUE,

> seq(from=1, to=100) # integers from 1 to 100

> runif(n=10, min=1, max=6)

> rnorm(n=10, mean=5.2, sd=0.7)

> rexp(n=10, rate=7)

> mean(x) # arithmetic mean

Many statistical tests are built-in. Some common ones include:

> t.test(x, y) # t-test for equality of means