Chapter 1 A Monument to my Madness

This book contains all my personal coding notes from the last two years. Why am I doing this? Probably because I’m a glutton for punishment, and I’d rather procrastinate than write my dissertation proposal.

1.1 What this book is, and what it is not

You know those absolutely amazing, comprehensive guides where you can learn everything you need to know about R? This is is not one of those guides.

This book is designed as a quick reference guide for many of the most common things you’ll need to do in everyday data analysis and research. Think of it like a coding dictionary, as opposed to a manual or comprehensive text.

If you want (or need) to learn R in-depth and/or from the ground up (i.e., you’re a novice user), then you should go read Hadley Wickham’s book and the tidyverse websites. Also, these slides might be a good high-level overview if you’ve never used the tidyverse before.

That said, if you’re already familiar with R and the tidyverse and just need a quick reference for “what command do I need to accomplish XYZ”, you’ve come to the right place.