R and RStudio¶
R is a free and open source statistical programming language. The main advantage of using R is its large community and many statistical packages. R packages are collections of functions which can greatly simplify analyses. Almost any statistical analysis you can think of will be in an R package, which also makes R optimal for amplicon data analysis.
RStudio is a great interface for running R, and gives a good overview of both your script, environment, console, plots, and much more.
Install (not needed when running analyses through ERDA)¶
Getting help with R¶
Search your problem or question on your favorite search engine and you will usually find multiple websites with the answer. Stack Overflow and R-bloggers, just to name a few examples, are great places to find help. Running ?nameOfFunction in R will guide you to the help page of the function. Most packages have a vignette, in which you can find detailed information on how to use the package.
Rstudio overview¶
In the image below the red text describes what the different sections in R-studio contains. A more detailed overview can be found in this blog
