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R

Join the R Track
R is an interpreted, open source programming language with powerful data manipulation and graphical capabilities. It has a thriving package ecosystem and is one of the most popular languages for data science.
Track mentors

4 Mentors

Our mentors are friendly, experienced R developers who will help teach you new techniques and tricks.
Track students

334 Students

Join hundreds of students who have enjoyed learning and improving their skills by taking this track.
Track exercises

32 Exercises

Hundreds of hours have gone into making these exercises fun, useful, and challenging to help you enjoy learning.

About R

R is an open source, programming lingua franca of statistics. It was created by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Auckland, who wanted a language that was better suited to statistical computing and easier to use than comparable software designed by computer scientists.

In addition to being a programming language, R is also an environment for interactive data analysis. Its powerful metaprogramming capabilities allow for magically succinct and concise functions. It can also integrate with high-performance programming languages like Fortran, C, and C++. These combined attributes provide an excellent environment for designing domain-specific languages.

Ross Ihaka describes R as "a real demonstration of the power of collaboration". R has a fantastic community of both users and developers, who contribute to a massive (and rapidly growing) collection of packages for importing, manipulating and visualising data, as well as cutting edge methods for statistical modelling and machine learning.

Learn more on r-project.org!

Join the R track 
collatz <- function(num) {
  if (num <= 0)
    stop("num must be positive")
  else if (num == 1)
    return(0)
  else if (num %% 2 == 0)
    return(1 + collatz(num / 2))
  else
    return(1 + collatz(3 * num + 1))
}

Exercism is a great website

The reviews are incredibly helpful because they help me see things that I missed, learn about new ways and sometimes interesting discussions that can add a fun twist to maybe a simple problem.

Bud Chirica, Scotland
Relaxed. Encouraging. Supportive.

Meet the R Track mentors

Once you join the R language track, you will receive support and feedback from our team of mentors. Here are the bios of a few of the mentors of this track.

Avatar of Jon Calder

Jon Calder https://github.com/jonmcalder

I was introduced to R during my statistics undergrad in 2006 and have been trying to learn to use it properly ever since! I love the power, flexibility and expressiveness of the language, and hope I can help others to appreciate it too.
Avatar of Alexandre Moradell

Alexandre Moradell https://github.com/amoradell

I work with R since 2015 and learned with several courses on Coursera and FUN. I like to help others and Exercism is the right place.
Avatar of Katrin Leinweber

Katrin Leinweber https://github.com/katrinleinweber

Studied biochemistry, biofilms (PhD), arctic ecology & geology. Worked in 1st level tech support @Prezi & in pharma-LIMS. Automate all the things responsibly!
Avatar of Jayaram Kancherla

Jayaram Kancherla https://github.com/jkanche

I use R in my work quite frequently and was introduced a long time ago when i was in grad school. I love the flexibility and readability of the language and would love to help others!
Fun. Challenging. Interesting

Community-sourced R exercises

These are a few of the 32 exercises on the R track. You can see all the exercises here.

Bob
easy
control flow conditionals
strings
Hamming
easy
filtering
strings
Diamond
easy
control flow loops
text formatting
Raindrops
easy
filtering
text formatting
Leap
easy
booleans
integers
logic
Beer Song
easy
control flow conditionals
text formatting
Passionate. Knowledgeable. Creative.

Meet the R Track maintainers

The R Maintainers are the brains behind the R Track. They spend their spare time creating interesting and challenging exercises that we can all learn from. We are incredibly grateful for their hard work. Here are the bios of a few of the maintainers of this track.

Katrin Leinweber GitHub

I struggled to apply R to my own PhD research data in 2013. A Science Craft grad school course finally got me started when I decided to use another, well-formated data set. Since then, I have found R to be a lifeline for data analysis and teaching myself and others one or the other programming skill :-) R may not be pretty, but it gets the job done.

Jon Calder My Website

I was introduced to R during my statistics undergrad in 2006 and have been trying to learn to use it properly ever since! I love the power, flexibility and expressiveness of the language, and hope I can help others to appreciate it too.

Get started with the R track. As with everything on Exercism, it's 100% free!

Join the R Track