R Programming Basics | Microsoft Tutorial

Key Takeaways

Hello and welcome to this screencast on basic R code. Today we're going to dive into the essentials of scripting in R using Visual Studio Code as our development environment. Whether you're new to programming or just new to R, this session will help you get comfortable with the basics. Let's start by understanding the structure of an R script. Think of a script as a set of instructions that you give to the computer to perform specific tasks. In R. These tasks can range from simple calculations to complex data analysis. First, let's write a simple calculation. In your R script, type the following. Let's type in result followed by the assignment operator 5 + 3. Then we will print result. Finally, let's add some commenting. In this case, we'll add the following comment. We'll use hashtag or pound to start our comment and type in this is a simple addition in R. Now let's run this here in this problem. We're adding five and three and storing the result in a variable called result. Then we're printing it out. Notice that using the assignment operator in this case the less than minus sign that looks like an error arrow which is unique to R. R is case sensitive. So be mindful of how you name your variables. Also, comments in R are written using the hashtag symbol. As you can see here, it also colors it green. Comments are crucial for making your code understandable to others and to your future self. Now, to execute this code in VS Code, you can simply highlight the lines you want to run and press control enter or command enter depending of whether you're Windows or Mac. This will send the code to the R console and execute it. Let's try it again. Highlight it. Command enter. Now you should see the number eight printed in the console. As you can see, this is a result of our addition. Interpreting output is a very key skill here. The console output confirms that our code executed successfully and returned the expected value. If you encounter errors, check your syntax and ensure all of all the variables are correctly defined. Okay, now let's add a little bit more complexity. Let's clean our environment. Start by writing a function that multiplies two numbers. Let's type in multiply and then we'll autocomplete with the function x and y where we will ask to return the multiplication of x and y characterized by xar y. Now let's do using the function where we will define a variable called product assign it multiply. In this case let's do four and five. All right. Finally, let's print our product variable. So, press this. All right. Here we have defined the function multiply that takes two arguments and returns a product. We then call this function with the numbers four and five. Now, let's run this code the same way as before by highlighting it and doing command enter. You could see that 20 is printed in the console which is obviously the product of four and five. And there you have it. You've written and executed basic R code including a simple function. Remember, practice is key to becoming proficient in R. Keep experimenting with different operations and functions to deepen your understanding. Thank you for joining the screencast and happy coding.