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R Class Notes
General Information

1.0 Updating R, packages

To download the latest version of R or to update packages in R, see our page on Installing, Customizing, and Updating R.

2.0 R version

The following command will display the version of R that you are using (along with details about platform and system).
version

3.0 How to find missing windows

In R, you can see the list of all of the open windows (Console, Editor, Graphics) by clicking on "Windows" in the menu bar. To view one of these windows, simply click on it from the drop-down list.

4.0 How to stop an R program

Sometimes it is necessary to stop an R program before it finishes running. To do this just click on the red octagon icon (the Stop sign) in the tool bar.

5.0 Help

You can get on-line help for any command by typing help followed by the command name in parentheses or a question mark followed by the command name. For example, 
help(mean)

?mean

Both of these will open a window containing the help file for the given command.  If you are seeking help for a technique, but don't know the command name, you can use the help.search command or ??:

help.search("survival")

??survival

Both of these will open an R information window listing out the packages and commands with "survival" in their description. 

There are some demonstrations that can be run in R with the demo command.  For example, demo(graphics) begins a demonstration of some of R's graphing capabilities.  There are sometimes demos included with a package that quickly present the major commands of the package. 

6.0 Web resources

RSeek is a search engine specific to pages officially related to R.

http://rseek.org/

UCLA Statistical Consulting Group's R web pages can be found at:

http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/r

The UCLA Statistics Department's consulting center has online mini-courses in R.

http://scc.stat.ucla.edu/mini-courses

7.0 User-written R programs

8.0 How to get, install, and customize R

R is free to download.  To get the latest version of R, go to the R-project website. To install and customize R, see our page on Installing, Customizing, and Updating R.

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