Introduction to R

Topics

• Introduction
• Syntax
• Control structures
• Functions
• Input and output of data
• Graphs
• Simple Regressions

Material

Handout

Software

For our practical examples (during the entire course) we will use the software environment R. I think that it is helpful to coordinate on one environment and R has the advantage of being free and rather powerful.

• Documentation for R is provided via the build in help but also through the R Homepage. Useful is An Introduction to R, The R language definition, Simple R, and Econometrics in R.
• A first entry into R eased through mice and menues is available through the R Commander.
• Users of Firefox get access to R help through the R Site Search Sidebar. However, this is a bit tricky. If the rsitesearch.xpi package does not install, open the package (e.g. in Emacs) and change two values in install.rdf: Set maxVersion to a version at least as large as the version of your browser. Set updateURL to an empty value.
• In the lecture I use the versatile editor Emacs with the ESS interface (ESS also helps with Stata, SAS, Splus, BUGS, and others).