R Foundations: The Basics, A Hands-On Interactive Course
Everything in R is built on a few simple ideas: you run a line, you store the result in an object, and almost every object is a vector of typed values. This five-lesson interactive course teaches those ideas from absolute zero, with live code you run as you learn.
Most beginner material throws syntax at you and hopes it sticks. This course builds the foundation in the order it actually makes sense: first how to run code and keep a result, then the vector that holds your data, how R computes with whole vectors at once, what happens when a value is missing, and finally how to add the packages that extend base R. Every lesson grounds one idea in a single running example, so nothing stays abstract.
Each lesson is a guided, interactive experience: you run R right in the page, answer checkpoints, and write code as you go. No setup, no installs.
The five lessons
Lesson 1: Your First R Session
Run your first lines of code, store results in objects with <-, and learn to read an error message instead of fearing it. The handful of moves every later lesson assumes.
Start Lesson 1: Your First R Session
Lesson 2: Atomic Vectors and Data Types
The vector is R's core container: many values of one type in a single object. Meet the main types, logical, integer, double and character, and see how to build and index a vector.
Start Lesson 2: Atomic Vectors and Data Types
Lesson 3: Operators, Recycling, and Coercion
Compute with whole vectors at once. See how R lines up vectors of different lengths by recycling, and how it quietly promotes types when you mix them, so you can predict the result instead of being surprised by it.
Start Lesson 3: Operators, Recycling, and Coercion
Lesson 4: Missing and Special Values
Real data has holes. Learn how NA spreads through a calculation, why that is the honest default, and how to handle missing values on purpose with na.rm and is.na().
Start Lesson 4: Missing and Special Values
Lesson 5: Install and Load Packages
Base R is only the start. Install a package once, load it with library() each session, and understand the difference, so the thousands of community tools are a line of code away.
Start Lesson 5: Install and Load Packages
Who this is for
Complete beginners. If you can open R or RStudio, you are ready, and you do not need any prior programming experience. By the end you will be comfortable running code, storing and inspecting values, and reasoning about what R will do before you press Run.
What you will be able to do
- Run R code, store results in objects, and read an error message calmly
- Build atomic vectors and tell logical, integer, double and character apart
- Predict the result of vectorized math, including recycling and type coercion
- Handle missing values deliberately instead of getting silent
NAresults - Install and load packages to extend base R with community tools
This course is part of the free New to R foundations track.