Essentially, R is a language that was made to handle complex statistics, working with vectors and data frames. The strength of R over other languages lies in its statistics, linear algebra, and especially its ability to make graphs and figures.
Yes, Python is a beautiful language that strikes an amazing balance between syntax and power. With the frequent release of new packages for both R and Python the overlap in function is becoming greater. However, for now R still has the upper-hand when it comes to math, statistics, and graphs.
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. - Bruce Lee
There is a lot of truth to this. My recommendation is to find which is most useful and comfortable language for you and spend time mastering that one. For a lot of scientists, this tends to be R. But there is certainly a lot of practicality in being familiar and comfortable with multiple languages.
To work through this tutorial you will need to download and install the latest version of R from the CRAN website.
Additionally, but not necessary, RStudio is a nice program that runs R and makes many things easier for users, particularly saving and opening files and figures.
And now we are ready to get started!
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me by e-mail at sdsmith@iastate.edu
Disclaimer: There are people far, far more knowledgeable about R and how it works than myself. There are very few questions that I have had that I could not find the answer to explained by an expert on stackoverflow or similar sites. Using Google and other search engines effectively is a powerful skill.
Schuyler Smith
Ph.D. Student - Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Iowa State University. Ames, IA.