The software environment R (R Development Core Team, 2015) is nowadays the most commonly used software in the statistical world, and this software is heavily used in this book. The methods described in any of the following chapters are practically applied, and the application of the methods is shown using the statistical environment R. For a book on simulation and data science in R, and to efficiently apply methods, a longer R introduction is needed, especially on features that support efficient calculations.
In this chapter, you will be given a very brief introduction to the functionality of R. This introduction does not replace a general introduction to R but instead shows some useful points, such as introducing modern visualization tools and efficient data manipulation packages. These topics — among others from this chapter — are important for understanding the examples and the R code in the book.
More important than replicating a fully comprehensive...