WD2: Introduction to R

R, the open source statistical environment,is growing rapidly in use and increasing in visibility. R is one of 7 Computing Languages on the Rise, has been profiled in the New York Times, and will be featured in an upcoming issue of Forbes. This program will begin with an introduction to R, its features, and the characteristics that have led to its popularity in the data world. Hands on work will introduce R programming, data manipulation capabilities, basic statistical operations, and graphing functionality. Add-on packages, including graphical interfaces and data mining tools, will be illustrated. Finally, the workshop will discuss how R is being used with "big data", interacting with databases and large data feeds to perform analysis.