R Links

Author
Affiliation

Alex Taylor

University of Evansville

I built this page to point students (and anyone else learning R) to resources I’ve found helpful in my R journey. Use whatever information you’d like, but only for good. And give Stanley a virtual pat on the head before you go.

Getting Started with R

Start by downloading the R software environment:

Next download one of two IDEs, both developed by Posit:

  • Positron
    • A fork of VSCode specifically designed for R, also supports Python and Julia
    • Recently out of beta, but is mostly stable and has modern features absent from RStudio
    • If you have experience in VSCode, I recommend Positron
  • RStudio
    • The classic IDE for R, and still the most popular
    • Straightforward, easier to navigate, and very stable
    • If you have no experience with IDEs, I recommend RStudio

After installing R and an IDE, you can start learning R. Here are some resources to get you started:

Data Science in R

Working with LLMs in R

LLMs are rapidly enhancing work across many domains, including academia. Here are some resources for working with LLMs in R, including agentic coding and direct interaction with LLMs for data processing and more. This is a rapidly evolving space, so this list is not meant to be exhaustive nor perfectly up to date. But I’ll do my best to keep up!

  • ellmer
    • Many other packages built on ellmer
    • Interact directly with a variety of LLMs
    • Chat, submit batch queries, parallel queries, queries for structured data responses, and more!
  • mall
    • Natural language processing using LLMs in R
    • Package functions include built-in prompts for text extraction, classification, translation, sentiment analysis, and more!
    • Can also easily create your own custom prompts
  • Copilot code completion in RStudio
    • Setting this up is easier in Positron.
  • chattr
    • Chat with an LLM within your IDE, similar to copilot chat in VSCode
  • gander
    • Simple chat that sees your environment and existing code, and generates code in your Rscript according to your instructions
    • Somewhat similar to in-line copilot chat in VSCode (or Positron Assistant)

Web Crawling & Scraping in R

GIS

Text as Data