John Mount from Win-Vector LLC gave a very interesting and entertaining talk at this week’s Bay Area User Group Meeting, with seven tips for “surviving” R (based on a post on his blog). His recommendations include:
- Keep extensive written notes
- Find a way to search for R answers
- Learn to convert complex objects to canonical forms with unclass()
- Learn how to find and inspect classes and methods for objects
- Learn how to clear pesky attributes from objects
- Swallow your pride (which I interpret as the equivalent to Tim Gunn‘s “Make it work!”)
- Learn and use R’s many one-line idioms, rather than reinventing the wheel.
It’s always interesting to me how people approach the R language differently, and especially for those coming to R for languages where concepts like classes and attributes can seem a little arcane in R. This is a good guide for escaping some of those early “gotcha” moments. Check out all the details in the post linked below.
Win-Vector Blog: Survive R
