Chapter 1 Why we love R

Thank you for choosing this book on using R for health data analysis. Even if you’re already familiar with the R language, we hope you will find some new approaches here as we make the most of the latest R tools including some we’ve developed ourselves. Those already familiar with R are encouraged to still skim through the first few chapters to familiarise yourself with the style of R we recommend.

R can be used for all the health data science applications we can think of. From bioinformatics and computational biology, to administrative data analysis and natural language processing, through internet-of-things and wearable data, to machine learning and artificial intelligence, and even public health and epidemiology. R has it all.

Here are the main reasons we love R:

• R is versatile and powerful - use it for
  • graphics;
  • all the statistical tests you can dream of;
  • machine learning and deep learning;
  • automated reports;
  • websites;
  • and even books (yes, this book was written entirely in R).
• R scripts can be reused - gives you efficiency and reproducibility.
• It is free to use by anyone, anywhere.