Grand Valley State University

in a Nutshell

  • R is a programming language

    • Like MATLAB, Python, Java, C, and others
  • R is interpreted, meaning that commands are processed and run line by line, which is often more user-friendly
  • Interpreted languages often run (much) more slowly 🐌 than compiled languages (e.g., C and C++).

is great, but not the only option

  • : great options for machine learning, web scraping, etc. (but R has options for these endeavors as well!)
  • : good for stability of code, popular in certain industries (e.g., healthcare 🔬💊, agriculture 🌱, finance 💸)

Why ?

Other software tools do not require programming:

, ,

Why use R?

  • Reproducibility

  • Open-source (free)

  • Effective data visualizations

  • Popular in academia

Why ?