If you're considering R for statistical computing and data visualization, this book provides a quick and practical guide to just about everything you can do with the open source R language and software environment. You'll learn how to write R functions and use R packages to help you prepare, visualize, and analyze data. Author Joseph Adler illustrates each process with a wealth of examples from medicine, business, and sports.Updated for R 2.14 and 2.15, this second edition includes new and expanded chapters on R performance, the ggplot2 data visualization package, and parallel R computing with Hadoop.Get started quickly with an R tutorial and hundreds of examplesExplore R syntax, objects, and other language detailsFind thousands of user-contributed R packages online, including BioconductorLearn how to use R to prepare data for analysisVisualize your data with R's graphics, lattice, and ggplot2 packagesUse R to calculate statistical fests, fit models, and compute probability distributionsSpeed up intensive computations by writing parallel R programs for HadoopGet a complete desktop reference to R