Efficient R Programming

A Practical Guide to Smarter Programming

There are many excellent R resources for visualization, data science, and package development. Hundreds of scattered vignettes, web pages, and forums explain how to use R in particular domains. But little has been written on how to simply make R work effectively—until now. This hands-on book teaches novices and experienced R users how to write efficient R code.

Drawing on years of experience teaching R courses, authors Colin Gillespie and Robin Lovelace provide practical advice on a range of topics—from optimizing the set-up of RStudio to leveraging C++—that make this book a useful addition to any R user’s bookshelf. Academics, business users, and programmers from a wide range of backgrounds stand to benefit from the guidance in Efficient R Programming.

• Get advice for setting up an R programming environment
• Explore general programming concepts and R coding techniques
• Understand the ingredients of an efficient R workflow
• Learn how to efficiently read and write data in R
• Dive into data carpentry—the vital skill for cleaning raw data
• Optimize your code with profiling, standard tricks, and other methods
• Determine your hardware capabilities for handling R computation
• Maximize the benefits of collaborative R programming
• Accelerate your transition from R hacker to R programmer