Chapter 1 Introduction

Welcome! In this book you will learn the essentials of the R language and the tidyverse workflow through a series of short, hands-on chapters, from zero to pro. We begin by making sure your toolkit is ready—installing R, RStudio, and a few helper packages. Next, you will discover how R doubles as a fancy calculator, try out the built-in help system, and learn how to write clear, reproducible code.

The opening chapter closes with your first truly R-native skill: creating and assigning objects. By the end you will know how to store results, name them sensibly, and reuse them in later computations—an idea that returns throughout the book.

At a glance – Chapter 1 roadmap
Section 1.1. Installation: Get R and RStudio running on your computer.
Section 1.2. R as a Calculator: Perform basic arithmetic, explore built-in functions, and query the help files.
Section 1.3. Object Assignment: Save your work as named objects and manage them inside RStudio.

Each subsequent chapter builds on this foundation. Chapter 2 introduces atomic vectors, Chapter 3 dives into other object types including matrices, data frames, tibbles and lists. Later chapters tackle visualization, data wrangling, and programming patterns.

Feel free to read linearly or jump straight to the topic you need-every section is written so that examples run independently once you have completed the installation step.

Happy coding!