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/sci/ - Science & Math

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7295722 No.7295722 [Reply] [Original]

I have a short (month-long) internship that involves making short programs in R, but I have zero background in programming. Most of the projects go way over my head even though they require very little code. What can I do in a brief period of time so that I'm not totally incompetent? I'm limited in my free time because I have a second job as well. Help me /sci/.

>> No.7295755

Use all your spare time to learn programming.

>> No.7295794

Well, the main use of R is to make programs that takes input data and performs statistical analysis of some sort on it.

The basics of R are pretty straightforward and you can find lots of resources and useful packages around the web.

Just by googling "R program examples", for instance, I find
>http://www.rexamples.com/1/R%20Basics
>http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah/KB/R/

Good luck

>> No.7295899

R is actually not a simple language. It's functional. I could describe it a long time, but I don't bother. The one thing I wanna mention is how OOP is implemented in R. This is at least a disaster. But, on the other hand, R gives a very good understanding of programming when full powers of R are utilized.

>> No.7297544

R isn't that hard if you're a complete beginner, it's only hard if you're used to a sensible programming language.

Check out other people's R code. www.r-bloggers.com is pretty good.

>> No.7297549

>>7295899
it's not purely functional though, you can use while and for loops as you please making it a lot easier than for example haskell

>> No.7297554

>>7295722

R's not really a language you can just do random shit in to learn casually in your free time. You'd be better off with a normal / general purpose language if you want to do that, like Python or C#.

Learning R's pretty straightforward when you have actual need for it, but like other domain specific languages, it's going to be useless for you if you don't already have tasks like that in mind.

>> No.7297556

>>7297554
what the fuck are you talking about
for a beginner R and Python are very similar and do almost exactly the same stuff

>> No.7297558

>>7295722
why did you take an internship in something you don't have the first clue about

fuck fuCK FUCK that makes me mad

>> No.7297561

>>7297558
doesn't everyone?
my friend is going for an internship now where he needs to use SQL and he only has a vague idea what SQL even is
my other friend had to use fortran for her internship last summer and just learned fortran on the job so to speak

>> No.7297566

>>7297556

Look up all the standard Python modules and then tell me how many of them have a comparable set of R functions.

R's not a general programming language just because it can do loops. Technically even SQL is Turing complete, but you wouldn't want to do most programming activities with SQL alone either.

>> No.7297569

>>7297566
yes Python is a far more powerful language but if you're at the level where you need to use 90% of the standard Python modules or even know what they are you are not a beginner anymore and wouldn't make a thread as stupid as this one

>> No.7297576

>>7297558
cus pursuit of happiness

>> No.7297579

R is just as powerful as python, its just very rarely used that way

>> No.7297582

>>7297579

>R is just as powerful as python

Only in the same sense that a SKI combinator is just as powerful as Python.

>> No.7297584

>>7297582

You don't want to do general programming in a statistical language, you also don't want to do statistics in a general programming language.

For data analysis and statistics nothing can touch R. Python is improving with pandas and scikit-learn, but it's still pretty far behind.

>> No.7297588

>>7297584

I agree R is better than Python for statistics, but OP is apparently unemployed and has no statistical tasks to solve in the first place, hence why he should probably look into a general programming language instead.

Most people don't have a bunch of statistical ideas they want to experiment with in the absence of actual work, but plenty of people can come up with random uses for general programming languages without the motivation of real problems / responsibilities.