3.6 Help!

There are many resource for figuring out R and RStudio, including

• R’s built in “help” function
• Q&A websites like stackoverflow.com
• twitter, using the hashtag #rstats
• blogs
• online books and course materials

3.6.1 Getting “help” from R

If you are using a function in R you can get info about how it works like this

?mean

In RStudio the help screen should appear, probably above your console. If you start reading this help file, though, you don’t have to go far until you start seeing lots of R lingo, like “S3 method”,“na.rm”, “vectors”. Unfortunately, the R help files are usually not written for beginners, and reading help files is a skill you have to acquire.

For example, when we load data into R in subsequent lessons we will use a function called “read.csv”

Access the help file by typing “?read.csv” into the console and pressing enter. Surprisingly, the function that R give you the help file isn’t what you asked for, but is read.table(). This is a related function to read.csv, but when you’re a beginner thing like this can really throw you off.

Kieran Healy as produced a great cheatsheet for reading R’s help pages as part of his forthcoming book. It should be available online at http://socviz.co/appendix.html#a-little-more-about-r

3.6.2 Getting help from the internet

The best way to get help for any topic is to just do an internet search like this: “R read.csv”. Usually the first thing on the results list will be the R help file, but the second or third will be a blog post or something else where a usually helpful person has discussed how that function works.

Sometimes for very basic R commands like this might not always be productive but its always work a try. For but things related to stats, plotting, and programming there is frequently lots of information. Also try searching YouTube.

3.6.3 Getting help from online forums

Often when you do an internet search for an R topic you’ll see results from the website www.stackoverflow.com, or maybe www.crossvalidated.com if its a statistics topic. These are excellent resources and many questions that you may have already have answers on them. Stackoverflow has an internal search function and also suggests potentially relevant posts.

Before posting to one of these sites yourself, however, do some research; there is a particular type and format of question that is most likely to get a useful response. Sadly, people new to the site often get “flamed” by impatient pros.

3.6.4 Getting help from twitter

Twitter is a surprisingly good place to get information or to find other people knew to R. Its often most useful to ask people for learning resources or general reference, but you can also post direct questions and see if anyone responds, though usually its more advanced users who engage in twitter-based code discussion.

A standard tweet might be “Hey #rstats twitter, am knew to #rstats and really stuck on some of the basics. Any suggestions for good resources for someone starting from scratch?”