R in Action
Third Edition
by Rob Kabacoff

Thank you for purchasing the MEAP for R in Action (3rd edition). If you picked up this book,
you probably have some data that you need to collect, summarize, transform, explore, model,
visualize, or present. If so, then R is for you! R has become the worldwide language for
statistics, predictive analytics, and data visualization. It offers the widest range of
methodologies for understanding data currently available, from the most basic to the most
complex and bleeding edge.
This book should appeal to anyone who deals with data. No background in statistical
programming or the R language is assumed. Although the book is accessible to novices, there
should be enough new and practical material to satisfy even experienced R mavens.
There is a generally held notion that R is difficult to learn. What I hope to show you is that
is doesn’t have to be. R is broad and powerful, with so many analytic and graphic functions
available (more than 80,000 at last count) that it easily intimidates both novice and
experienced users alike. But there is rhyme and reason to the apparent madness. With
guidelines and instructions, you can navigate the tremendous resources available, selecting
the tools you need to accomplish your work with style, elegance, efficiency, and certain degree
of coolness.
By the end of the book, you should be able to use R to
• Access data (importing data from multiple sources)
• Clean data (code missing data, fix or delete miscoded data, transform variables into
more useful formats)
• Explore and summarize data (getting descriptive statistics to help characterize the
data)
• Visualize data (using a wide range of attractive and meaningful graphs)
• Model data (uncovering relationships, testing hypotheses, and developing predictive
models using both basic and advancedl statistical techniques and cutting edge machine
learning approaches)
• Prepare results for others (creating publication-quality tables, graphs, and reports)
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please share them in Manning’s
Author Online forum for my book. Your comments are invaluable and will help me craft
content that is easier to understand and use effectively.

注意：
本书为MEAP版本（官方全书目前更新至17章），介意者请勿花论坛币兑换。
已兑换的后续整书面市后私信留下邮箱将免费更新。