If you picked up this book, you probably have some data that you need to collect, summarize, transform, explore, model, visualize, or present. If so, then R is for you! R has become the world-wide language for statistics, predictive analytics, and data visualization. It offers the widest range available of methodologies for understanding data, from the most basic to the most complex and bleeding edge. As an open source project it’s freely available for a range of platforms, including Window’s, Mac OS X, and Linux. It’s under constant development, with new procedures added daily. Additionally, R is supported by a large and diverse community of data scientists and programmers who gladly offer their help and advice to users. Although R is probably best known for its ability to create beautiful and sophisticated graphs, it can handle just about any statistical problem. The base installation provides hundreds of data-management, statistical, and graphical functions out of the box. But some of its most powerful features come from the thousands of extensions (packages) provided by contributing authors. This breadth comes at a price. It can be hard for new users to get a handle on w’hat R is and what it can do. Even the most experienced R user is surprised to learn about features they were unaware of. R in Action provides you with a guided introduction to R, giving you a 2,000-foot view of the platform and its capabilities. It will introduce you to the most important functions in the base installation and more than 90 of the most useful contributed packages. Throughout the book, the goal is practical application—how you can make sense of your data and communicate that understanding to others.